Editorial: The strikes in France (1953)

Editorial from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The strike movement which began on 5th August among Post Office workers and quickly spread to transport, gas, electricity and many other state and private undertakings and involved at its height some three or four million workers was still in progress a fortnight later; though by that time some workers had returned to work because their strikes had been deliberately limited to one or two days, and others had been reported as drifting back. As a movement to demonstrate workers' solidarity and to bring pressure to bear on the government and the employers it was complete and highly efficient. As was remarked by one observer, the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, “rarely has any strike movement in France, planned and announced in advance, been so successful ” (Manchester Guardian, 8/8/53).

The spark that set off the Post Office strike was a report that the Government’s “emergency” economy measures included reductions of Post Office staff and extending the age of retirement on pension. It was later denied that the Government had ever intended to make the later retirement compulsory but a possible explanation is that they were preparing the way and only the unanimous demonstration of resistance by the strikers made them repudiate it. The reason why the strike was enthusiastically joined by millions of other workers demanding higher wages was that the workers in general were finding their low standard of living being further reduced by rising prices. Mr. Douglas Jay, in the Daily Herald (13/8/53) estimated that “the average wage-earner in France today if he is single, gets a wage not much above two-thirds of what the British wage-earner gets." It is only through the higher rate of family allowances in France that the worker, if he has a wife and three children, has an income about equal to that of workers in Britain. Mr. Jay also pointed out that under French rent acts rents are exceedingly low—he goes so far as to claim that "the British worker’s family on the average spends eight times as much on rent as the French.”

But he went on to say:—

“However, these cheap rents—which the new decrees are to raise—are not much consolation to the French worker. It is partly just because food prices are so high that he has little to spare for anything else." (Italics, Mr. Jay’s).

Although Mr. Jay draws attention to these facts he fails to see how hollow they make the social reforms of the “Welfare State” which he and the French Labour leaders so blindly support. Unless the workers use their only industrial weapon, the strike, to fight for higher wages; low rents and social insurance benefits merely operate to enable employers to pay a low money wage. This is further borne out by Nora Beloff, writing from Paris to the “Observer” (16th August, 1953) on the condition of French workers.

"An official publication has revealed that they enjoy an even smaller proportion of the national revenue today than before the war: the substantial rise in social benefits has been more than offset by the severe drop in real wages. The Civil Service is proportionately worse off than am employees of private business."

So much for the alleged benefits of the “Welfare State” and of being employed by the Government.

The strikes themselves have had some very interesting features. It has been customary in Western Europe, including Great Britain, for Governments and some trade union officials to see in every strike the hand of the Communists; but the French Postal strike was started not by the Communist Union but by the anti-communist French Post Office Workers’ Union belonging to the “Labour Force” trade union federation. They took the initiative first in the Post Office and then in other industries, and the Communist Trade Union Federation (C.G.T.) and the Christian Trade Union Federation later joined in. It happens that the “Labour Force” Union is stronger than the Communist and Christian Unions among Post Office workers, though the C.G.T. claims in all 2,000,000 members as against about 800,000 in the “Labour Force” Federation and the same number in the Christian Federation. As the Times remarked (7/8/53) “ No Communist interference seems to have been needed to start the trouble.”

But though the excuse of Communist “plotting” could not be used this did not prevent the French Government from threatening to use all measures to smash the strikes, including the movement of tanks into Paris (News Chronicle 18/8/53).

The French Prime Minister when he ordered the movement of tanks might have recalled the outcry three months ago when Russian tanks in Eastern Germany were used to overawe German strikers; but the Western Governments' reaction then was very different. They approved the strike and made horrified protests about the tanks, and with their approval the American Government has been distributing millions of food parcels to the hungry East German workers. But this time it is the French tanks not Russian, and there has been no offer by Western Governments of food parcels for the hungry French workers. The Daily Worker (11/8/53) seized on this and denounced British and other unions in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions for their decision to give money to help the East German workers while not doing the same for the workers of France and Italy. But the Communists are actually taking up a still worse attitude. Some British unions have agreed to give financial help to the French workers, while the Communists, instead of helping the strikers against the Communist Government of Eastern Germany pretend that they were not strikes but “American-inspired riots.”

The real tragedy of the trade union movement in France and in the world generally is that most trade unionists allow themselves to be diverted from single minded concentration on working class unity because of their attachment to nationalism and to support of one or other forms of Government of Capitalism. Except for a brief spell after the first world war and again after the second world war the international trade union movement, which before 1914 was a single organisation paying at least lip-service to international working-class unity, has been divided into bitterly hostile camps, the W.F.T.U. supporting Russian State Capitalism, and the I.C.F.T.U. supporting Western capitalism; not to mention the Christian and Independent groups maintaining isolation.

One hopeful aspect of the strikes in France was the way in which workers in the three rival groups (Labour Force, Communist and Christian) came out on strike together, temporarily forgetting their rivalries. This, and the fact that the strikes in Eastern Germany have demonstrated the workers’ defiance of the Communist dictatorship there may give reason to hope for some future movement towards world working class unity.

In the meantime the divisions in the French trade union movement endangered the strikes. It is of great importance, especially in a more or less general strike, that there should be common action not only to come out on strike but to go back as a united body. It is equally important that such strikes should not be allowed to drag on until, under pressure of starvation, workers begin to drift back one by one. This danger was heightened in France by the efforts of some of the leaders of the three main groups to outmanoeuvre and discredit each other in the conduct of the strike and by the parallel tactics of the Government and the employers to play one off against the other.

Kenya and Berlin (1953)

From the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enemy of an Enemy

Cardinal Richelieu was credited with basing his foreign policy on the maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The capitalist groups in the modern world work on the same slogan. In present world conditions Russian capitalism and its allies in the Soviet bloc, is in conflict with the capitalists of the Western world. The latter in their turn are engaged in struggles against the working class in each of the Western countries. Therefore the working class of the Western countries are the potential allies of the Russian rulers. This is the reason why the Russian rulers hold themselves out as the friend of “the toilers of Britain and America" and try to enlist the sympathy of the latter by means of the Communist Parties in those countries. The assiduity with which the Communist Party of Great Britain has built up the legend of “The Jolly George"—in which incident the workers of Britain are supposed to have prevented the British ruling class pursuing the war against the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Russian Revolution—shows, in spite of the fact that the story as related by them is not true, the direction in which their thoughts are moving, For the Russian rulers realise that, however powerful the Anglo-American ruling class might be, it could not, without the active support of the British and American workers, embark successfully on any war against the Soviet Union.

Vast Subversive Network

On the same principle, the ruling class of Britain and America show great sympathy for the oppressed workers in the countries under Soviet regimes, and try to stir up discontent and organise opposition. In the conditions obtaining in the Stalinist countries, this work has to be done underground, in exactly the same way as the Communist Parties have to work secretly in many western countries, among them Spain and Portugal, some of the South American republics, and (to an increasing degree) the United States itself. Thus an article in the “Readers' Digest” of October, 1952, says "West Berlin, an enclave deep in the Soviet Zone, continues to be headquarters for a vast subversive network radiating throughout Red Germany, warning police officials of the punishment in store for them, smuggling refugees to the West, ceaselessly distributing propaganda.”

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

But, one need scarcely add, the sympathy felt by the ruling class of Russia, and of Britain and America, for the struggle of the workers against their masters, stops at their own boundaries. The workers of an enemy country are fit subjects for sympathy; but never the workers of your own. Chapter and verse for these statements can be found in the recent events in Kenya and East Berlin. When in East Berlin and other German cities, on June 16th and 17th, the workers turned on their masters and protested by mass demonstrations against their wages and working conditions, the German Stalinist police, supported by Russian tanks and machine-guns, suppressed the demonstrations by force, killing a number of demonstrators. This was the signal for a barrage of sympathy from the rulers of the Western world. Dr. Adenauer said, “betraying deep emotion,” that “even in a cynical age there were still men prepared to die in the streets for an idea. They did not fear Russian tanks and machine-guns; they had shown to the world that they would not be slaves, and that the age of tyranny was over.” (The Times, 24-6-53; subsequent references are also to The Times, unless otherwise stated.) In Parliament Mr. Maclean, a Conservative, called the Russian action a “barbarous massacre” (25-6-53); and a group of Labour members tabled a motion reading: “That this House notes with intense interest and deep sympathy the struggle of the German workers against the Russian military dictatorship in Eastern Germany and deplores the execution without trial of the leaders thrown up by the workers in the struggle for bread and liberty” (24-6-53). Mr. Dulles, the American Secretary of State, found that the episode "demonstrates that the people do retain their love of God and love of country and their sense of personal dignity. They want to run their own affairs and not be run from Moscow. The unquenchable spirit of the people was dramatised in East Berlin, where unarmed youths tore up paving stones from the streets to hurl in defiance at tanks . . . The people want to be governed by those whom they select as responsive to their needs and desires, rather than to be ruled by those who take their orders from aliens and who give their orders with a view to achieving their own ambitions without regard to the welfare of the people concerned ” (1-7-53).

Kenya

If this is the attitude taken by the Western rulers to the events in East Berlin; why do not they deliver the same kind of stirring speeches about the disturbances in Kenya? Mr. Dulles thinks the East Germans want to run their own affairs; but the East Germans are at least allowed the semblance of free elections (skilfully manipulated though they may be by Herr Ulbricht and his friends) whereas in Kenya the Kikuyu and other Africans are openly barred from the franchise. A defender of the attitude of the Anglo-American ruling class might say that the two cases were different; the Kikuyu, in rebelling, did not stop short at peaceful demonstrations, but actually killed those whom they thought were oppressing them. The answer to this is— so did the East Germans: a number of police and state-officials were reported shot or beaten to death during the riots of June 16th and 17th (1-7-53). And this should cause no surprise; when workers are driven to desperation point, be their skins black or white, they often try to seek escape by using violence against individual members of the oppressing class or their hirelings.

Savagery

But again it might be alleged (by a supporter of the British ruling class) that the behaviour of Mau Mau adherents in Kenya has shown them to be savages at heart, and to be therefore beyond the sympathy of “civilised” men. But this is the last argument .which could be used by members of the British ruling class. If individual acts of barbarity are to blacken for ever the character of the nations to which their perpetrators belong, and place those nations for ever beyond the pale of civilisation and civilised rights, then why this sympathy and support for the Germans? These Germans are exactly the same as those against whom our rulers were lashing us into furious enmity only eight years ago, on the grounds of the savagery, the barbarity, the bestiality they had shown in the treatment of minorities inside Germany and of the populations of the occupied countries. Our rulers cannot now ignore the six years of unending propaganda with which they overwhelmed us in the second world war. The truth is that neither the East Germans nor the Kikuyu are any more brutal by nature than other human beings, though some of them have been driven by oppression and bad conditions into brutality (as were the East Germans on June 16th and 17th, and as the Kikuyu have been from time to time since a year ago).

“Fatherland of the Proletariat”

Just as East Berlin has shown up the hypocrisy of the rulers of the Western world, so it has shown up the hypocrisy of the Stalinist leaders. The Communist Parties of the world claim to be parties of the workers, organised in the interest of the workers; the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and the other Soviet countries are always to the fore with denunciations of “capitalist oppression” whenever the workers of the Western world are suppressed by force. In East Berlin the German and Russian Bolsheviks had the opportunity to show how they themselves deal with similar situations; and the outcome was as one would expect, for no capitalist system, whether its superstructure is of the Stalinist or the Western kind, can tolerate insubordination among its workers. By using the rifle, the machine-gun, and the tank against striking and rioting workers, the Stalinists have once more demonstrated the division between the master class and the working class in the countries under their control. 

Worse Than Useless

The Socialist attitude to these events can be explained in a few words. While we have sympathy with workers who are driven to break out in open violence, whether against Stalinist or a western ruling class, the killing of individual members of a ruling class does nothing at all to alter the economic basis of society; so long as that basis is unchanged, so long will there be a master class and a working class. Acts of violence on the part of the workers merely provoke the ruling class and its armed forces, and give it the excuse for bloody reprisals. In Eastern Germany, scores of workers are reported to have been killed; in Kenya, the “security forces" boasted that in three days last month they had killed a hundred “terrorists,” which is far more than the total number of whites killed by the Mau Mau since the beginning of the troubles (27-6-53). When workers become Socialists, they use their resentment at their conditions to spur them on towards ending the society that causes them, not in sporadic and pointless acts of violence. The Western leaders claim to be opposed to violence and murder as political weapons; but they reveal themselves as double-dealers when they incite the workers in Stalinist countries to use these weapons, although they know that the result can only be a slaughter among those who try to fight their political battles in the streets.

Alwyn Edgar

Slings and Arrows: “ Rats, Lice and History ” (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Rats, Lice and History ”

When the news burst upon an incredulous world that fourteen doctors had been arrested in Moscow for plotting to assassinate Soviet leaders; when furthermore these charges were added to by the accusations that they were in the pay or under the influence of international Jewish organisation, the Daily Worker, ever faithful to its masters in the Kremlin, rushed into print with stout assertions of the truth of all the charges. They denied that any anti-semitic motives were involved. They fervently expressed their belief that in the Soviet Union innocent people could not.be falsely accused and imprisoned. But unfortunately for the Daily Worker, within a few months the Russians themselves changed their tune and the doctors were released. Those who had accused them were imprisoned and charged with almost every crime from faking evidence to exacting, by illegal means, confessions from innocent people; from denying civil liberties and violating the Soviet constitution to fomenting racial prejudices. The Daily Worker, still faithful to their masters announced with pride that these events proved what safeguards there were in the Soviet Union and forgetting their previous support of the charges against the doctors, joined in denouncing the original accusers.

When strikes broke out in East Berlin, and workers were shot in the streets, when an unemployed worker was condemned to death and executed within a half hour of sentence being pronounced, once again the Daily Worker rushed into print to justify the ruthless savagery with which the workers of Berlin had been treated. Nothing is too vile for the Communists to swallow. Once again their masters had let them down, for Dr. Grotewohl, premier of East Germany, admitted that no amount of outside agitation would have succeeded if there had not already existed in the Soviet Zone “an explosive situation caused by misunderstanding.” So much for the Daily Worker's accusations that the strikers and rioters were “fascists and riffraff ” sent in by the Americans to foment trouble.

These swift and sudden reversals of attitude should have taught the Daily Worker the need for caution. But when the second in command of the Soviet Union was arrested and charged with treason and plotting, and was heaped with the most virulent execration, the Daily Worker again came to the defence of the accusers of Beria. “Beria—The Truth,” was the headline splashed across the front page. Are they sure it is the truth? Is it not on the cards that the accusers of Beria may shortly be arrested and charged with extorting confessions, and using illegal means as is the case with the doctors? May it not be possible that Beria will be released and this former hero, present scoundrel become the future hero? Another question poses itself. Will the Daily Worker issue any guarantee as to the integrity of any Soviet leader, and why is it that when the Communists choose leaders, almost one by one they turn out to be traitors? 

Let it be remembered when next the Daily Worker and the Communist Party pretend to represent the interests of the workers, that they are prepared to defend and also to perpetrate any infamy as long as it suits the Russian riding class. They demonstrated this in their support, opposition, and then support of the War; they showed this when they condemned striking miners at Grimethorpe, and they have shown this in their support of the shooting down of strikers in East Berlin. And also be it remembered that when workers struck for more tolerable conditions, the Russians showed themselves to be as ruthless, as anti-working class as any state they term “Capitalist cannibals,” but whose treatment of workers they not only emulate but surpass.

Readers may remember that before the war a book was published dealing with the effects of plague carrying vermin on history. We apologise for stealing its title for this paragraph but could think of nothing more apt.

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Who are the Workers?

Who has not heard the assertion that the workers are those who do the least work, and constantly demand more money for less effort? Many and varied have been the appeals for increased production, harder work, wage freezes and so on. Yet, although some sections of the working-class have responded nobly to the call, others have turned a deaf ear and pointed out that increased production coupled with wage freezes mean only more dividends for the bosses, and eventual unemployment for themselves. It is to such curmudgeons that we quote the example of a man who has not one job but well over a gross. Mr. J. Arthur Rank, according to the City Man's Diary in the Evening Standard (July 14th, 1953) is a director of one hundred and eighty seven companies. In the face of such supreme effort can any worker fail to give of his best?

The City Man with a fine show of industry himself, works out that if Mr. Rank does a forty hour week he is able to devote 12½ minutes to each company providing he does nothing else. “Over a year, allowing him a month’s holiday he could spend one and a quarter days on average on the affairs of each company.”

You miners who labour in the bowels of the earth, you stokers who work in hot furnace rooms, you clerks who become prematurely bent over your ledgers and all you who bemoan your lot; you with only one job to do and forty or forty-eight hours in the week to do it in spare a thought and perhaps a tear for the man who has one hundred and eighty seven jobs, all of them vital and important, and who can only devote 12½ minutes to each in the week. Think with awe and respect of a man who is such a genius that he can direct the fortunes of all those companies in as little time almost as it takes to make a cup of tea. No wonder he is the wealthy Mr. Rank, while we wallow in the poverty of only one job.

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Jolly Old Pals

At every General Election since the war, the Labour Party has claimed support on many grounds. Not least of these is the claim that a Labour Government would minimise industrial strife and that the Unions would get such a square deal from their pals in the Labour Government, that strikes would become extinct as a method for settling industrial disputes. They made our flesh creep with tales of what would happen in the event of the return of a Tory Government. Those who remembered the past might well be forgiven for believing these tales.

Just as other claims made by the Labour Party have been exposed as sham and hollow, so this one has received a nasty blow and from none other than Mr. Arthur Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. At the Annual Conference of the Union Mr. Deakin rose to defend himself against the charge that he had said the Tories were not all “a bad bunch.” He admitted expressing these 'sentiments but continued:—

“With Sir Walter Monckton as Minister of Labour we have had a square deal, and done things which were difficult to do when our own people were in that position."

(Manchester Guardian, 16/7/53.)

Not for the first time has a Trade Union leader discovered that whatever the intentions of his friends in a Labour Government may be, the task of administering capitalism, as well as political considerations, compel a Mr. George Isaacs to say “no,” where a Sir Walter Monckton would say “yes.” And in reverse the Trade Union leader would not wish to put his friends in a difficult position by threatening action, where he could use that weapon on a Tory Minister with possibly good effect.

Will we see Arthur Deakin and others stumping the country asking support for Tories, because they give a “square deal”? What will happen to the Labour Party then?

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Without Comment

“Would not the Prime Minister agree that the only way to improve the standards of living of the backward races and to avert economic world disaster is to allow all peoples to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest markets because if goods cannot cross frontiers, armies will. Will he set the people free?” Sir Waldron Smithers.

Answer by the Prime Minister: “Those seem to me, on the whole, to be unobjectionable sentiments.”

S.A.