Political Notes: Norman's Defeat (1981)

The Political Notes Column from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Norman’s defeat
Norman St. John Stevas, as might be expected about anyone with a name like that, is well known for his sense of humour. At least, much of what he says matches the soppy grin he perpetually carries about on his face.

Whatever he has. he probably needed all of it when he was abruptly sacked in Thatcher’s first reshuffle of her government. In fact the whole thing had its funny side because when she fired Stevas Thatcher sent him a lovely letter telling him what a splendid chap he is and what valuable work he has done in the government. If a management did that on the factory floor the Industrial Tribunals would be swamped with complaints about unfair dismissal.

However, Norman added to the hilarity by declaring himself a devotee of ". . . compassionate, caring, one-nation Conservatism” and promising to keep up a fight for this. One problem he will obviously have will be knowing just what he is fighting for, since there can’t be anyone who is confident about the meaning of the phrase. Stevas is in immediate danger of becoming lost in the forest of meaningless verbiage which is the political terminology of capitalism.

Whatever is meant by “one nation”, it clearly doesn't exist in a society which is founded on the privileged standing of a parasitic minority over that of the useful, working, producing majority. It is no more than a catch phrase intended to hide the realities of capitalism's opposites of riches and poverty and at that it is transparently bogus.

But connoisseurs of such deceits need not fear. Norman’s dismissal doesn’t have to harm his ambitions, especially if he becomes a leader of the growing Tory unease at Thatcher’s performance. We may even end up with him as another in the line of “one nation" Conservative Prime Ministers. And we will need a sense of humour to survive that.


Roy Jenkins
With the return from Europe of Roy Jenkins, like a messiah come back from the wilderness, or wherever messiahs come back from, the prospects for the formation of a new Centre Party in Britain begin to look firmer. Of course it will be a pretty big job starting up a new organisation aiming at the immediate capture of political power against the might of the Labour and Conservative parties. And if that doesn’t leave Jenkins with enough problems there is Lord George Brown promising that if a Centre Party is formed he will be one of the first to join.

A few Labour MPs are also lining up for a seat on what they hope will he a runaway bandwagon, even it it is a bit early to get in their bid for a job. Mike Thomas is one, declaring himself in the Co-operative News — although whether anyone actually reads that journal is another matter. Roy Mason and Tom Ellis are others who are threatening to recast the entire face of British politics and then of course there is the famous, if less predictable. Gang of Three. 'This dazzling array of talent is banking on popular disillusionment with Labour policies persuading workers that capitalism would be more tolerable if it were administered, not from the "left” or the “right", but from the “centre”.

Nobody has actually decided what these terms mean nor where, say, the "left” ends and the “centre” begins. The problem is that in essentials there is no difference between them other than perhaps an ephemeral emphasis on a particular ailment of capitalism or on a personality.

Experience tells us that “left wing” ministers run capitalism very much like “right wingers’’ and that, whatever label is stuck on a government when it takes office in practice it is very little different from others with different labels—and it often ends up with the opposite label to the one it began with. This has little or nothing to do with the personnel of a government: it is simply that the capitalist system can be run in only one way — against the interests of the majority of its people.

So if Jenkins does ever make Number Ten from the Centre, we shall hardly notice the difference. His journey from Brussels is not necessary.


Postman’s knock
As the new season of explosives by mail order gets under way, we might anyday find that the 1981 publicity slogan for the Post Office will be that “Someone, somewhere, wants a letter bomb from you”.

There was, let us say straight away, absolutely no substance in the scurrilous rumour that the recent example of such missives, addressed to Margaret Thatcher, was sent by the reshuffled Cabinet Wets. At the current rate of postal charges they would have needed a whip round to pay for it, which might have been difficult at their lower wages.

What on earth do these bombers think they are doing? Do they seriously believe that if they had killed or injured Thatcher it would have made the slightest difference to the way British capitalism operates? Do they think there would not have been someone ready to take her place, at the head of a Tory government? Do they delude themselves that it would even have damaged the Tory Party? Or done anything at all to convince the working class that they should stop giving their support to capitalism?

In reality such acts of political terrorism have the opposite effect. Firstly, as they arouse sympathy for the victims and for what they stand for; as the IRA know only too well, martyrdom is a seductive vote catcher. They encourage an official state reaction against the terrorists, which can damage working class political freedom—witness the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act, rushed through by "liberal” Home Secretary Roy Jenkins immediately after the Birmingham pub bombings.

Finally, terrorism obscures the essential issue that the policies of capitalist parties exist and operate only because the working class support the system. That support is a matter of ideas and those ideas must change before capitalism will end. There is no evidence that this change will happen under the pressure of violence, however it is delivered.

Running Commentary: Doleful story? (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doleful story?
It’s a funny thing, the way the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always said that there are two classes in society. After all, isn’t the recession hitting us all, whoever we are?

Take the Board of Directors of Spillers, for example. Their company was recently bought out by Dalgety, the international agricultural trading group, for £70 million and all the directors lost their jobs. They’ll probably be queueing up for the dole.

After all, look at their pay-offs. Ex-chairman Michael Vernon got £140,000. He had been earning £47,000 a year together with the use of a £155,000 company house in Paulton Square, Chelsea which he has now bought himself. He also has a 500-acre arable farm in Hampshire, and has recently become a director of Strong and Fisher.

At the time of the Spillers takeover he sold 266,800 of his 310,000 shares for £115,000. Three other directors each got “redundancy payments” of over £100,000 and the total paid to the Board was £1,700,000. It’s a terrible thing, this recession, isn’t it.


Eton racket
School for many young people is a shabby uniform, grimy surroundings and being constantly made to feel you are nobody special. It means being well trained to passively accept a lifetime of being employed and living a second-rate existence.

Not all schools however prepare their pupils for such a life sentence. If you attend Eton, to take one example, you will learn how to behave as a fully fledged parasite living in security and luxury at the expense of those who produce and administer all the wealth in society. You will be conditioned to feel a superior person, a different caste of person from the ordinary state school blighter.

You will have a special wardrobe of clothes for different occasions at school and acquire a peculiar public school banter and a refined accent. While most people at school are feeling great anxiety or despair at the bleak prospects for getting a job as rising unemployment particularly threatens school-leavers, not all school students have got reason to worry.

At Eton and places like it you eat drink and learn and sleep with with the sons of scroungers (aristocrats, politicians) and with your future livelihood not dependent on a visit to the Job Centre, you get friendly with the people who you will one day be in control with.

In a recent survey conducted on pupils at Eton (results published in the Eton Chronicle) three out of every four questioned believed they are simply a cut above everyone else; 74 per cent agreed that “Etonians could be said to have certain features that, for what ever reasons, set them apart from others’’. On the surface you might think those special features were arrogance, lofty turns of phrase and feeling at ease wearing a white bow tie or shooting wild animals.

More accurately what sets these parasites apart from the rest of us is their privileged economic position in society. You need the £12,000 odd for fees before you get to go to Eton. It’s not an unequal education system which produces a two-class society, but a two-class society which produces one sort of school for scroungers and one sort for the wealth producers.


A matter of taste
Many doctors have turned down a request by the insurance brokers K T Jarrett of Bristol to display, in their waiting rooms posters and prospectuses of a new insurance scheme offering cover against the birth of a handicapped child. A spokesman for the British Medical Association said: ’’It is particularly tasteless to expect a doctor to congratulate a patient on her pregnancy and then to point to an insurance scheme like this.”

Tasteless it may be, but the quest for profit rarely respects taste. In fact a lot of the time the quest for profit ignores a lot more than taste. It can for instance ignore lengthy, but prudent, research on the safety of a medicine, as the owners of Distillers (the producers of Thalidomide) will testify. The company which exported blood-stained military uniform pieces from Vietnam (often off dead bodies) to sell in America as novelty fashion wear was not exactly over concerned about “taste”.

Neither was the man who recently set up a binocular vending stall at the bottom of the high-rise block from which a man was threatening suicide. Capitalism is a society in which the dog-cat-dog ethic and the drive for profit is the order of the day.


Surplus and Starvation
World Commodity Outlook in 1981: Food Feedstuffs and Beverages, the latest report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, records a recent sharp fall in world wide wheat production. No. not because of drought, nor seed shortages, nor floods, lack of willing workers nor insectal pests. As more than a few people are at this moment dying, slowly, from starvation the reason for the falling wheat output warrants pursuit.

The reason is only half slated by the report, which warns that the governments of most developed countries have concentrated on “holding back the creation of surpluses” rather than on maximising production. The reason for the “holding back” is the same reason the USA Federal government has had in paying Northern American farmers to stop producing wheat, and even to burn wheat already harvested; it is also the same reason for Brazilian coffee being dumped in the ocean and the reason for the EEC”s mountains of butter and lakes of wine.

The reason is that these things, like all others today, are being produced to sell for the profit of the industry-owners. If they decide to keep back or destroy quantities of a certain product to stop its price from falling (to keep profits up) then that’s exactly what will be done. For as long as we allow a minority of people to own and control the resources of the earth and the places of production they will have these operated only for profit and actual human need will be ignored.

And human need isn’t only to do with those starving creatures in the so-called third world it’s also every one of your unfulfilled wants.


Strong lobbies
On a similar theme, the US Department of Health and Human Services has issued a report revealing that contaminants found in all commercial PCP (pentachlorophenol) caused liver cancer in rats and that there was a danger that it could similarly affect humans. The wood preservation and pest control company Rentokil has issued a statement to try to diffuse any anxiety, as it is using this deadly chemical in several of its products. Although the US authorities are now considering the withdrawal of PCP’s licence there will be a strong lobby, backed by the comfortable owners of Rentokil, to retain the chemical’s legality and to keep those profits flowing in unhindered by safety precaution obstacles.

That these “strong lobbies" from owners of industry work, is borne out by the recent success of the Ford Motor Company. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had ordered that 16,000,000 cars produced at Fords between 1970 and 1979 |be recalled and modified with a safety feature to stop them suddenly moving off in reverse. It was alleged that 98 people had already been killed in accidents attributable to the defect. The owners of the company were not entirely keen on this idea as the cost of the recall would have been about $100 million, and the company was already heavily in debt. Now after three years of wheeling and dealing between Ford “negotiators’’ and government officials the government has decided not to enforce the NHTSA ruling and the murderous machines are still on the loose

Gary Jay

The new Russian ruling class (1981)

Book Review from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

La Nomenklatura by Michael Voslensky (Belfond, Paris)

This book, written in German by a dissident who left Russia in 1972 and here translated into French, will also no doubt sooner or later appear in English but meanwhile we can already mention some of the information it gives on the privileges of the Russian ruling class.

Russia is a state capitalist country where the means of production belong to the state which in turn is dictatorially controlled by the single political party allowed to exist. The means of production are thus effectively monopolised by the top layers of the party, who constitute the owning, exploiting class. They are in fact a capitalist class, even though their ownership is collective rather than individual (as was for instance that of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages). Similarly, the proceeds of their exploitation of the Russian working class are shared out as bloated "salaries" and various institutionalised privileges and benefits in kind rather than as dividends.

Although Voslensky does not use the term "state capitalism" he shows that Russia is a class society in which the workers and peasants are exploited by a ruling, owning class as the "nomenklatura", a social group who occupy the posts which the Party, at various levels has the sole right to fill. It is a clearly defined group—a special document proves membership—and Voslensky estimates their number at 750,000 (with their families, 3 million) or 1.5 per cent of the population, a tiny minority like the capitalist class in the West.

The official average monthly wage in Russia is 167 roubles. The basic pay of a head of sector at the Central Committee of the Party is 450 roubles, but this does not take into account that he is paid a 13th month, receives a cure bonus and tickets called kremliovka which entitle him to obtain good quality food cheaply. According to Voslensky, these extra perks bring his monthly income up to 750 roubles.

Then there are the various privileges in kind. A member of the nomenklatura lives in a luxury flat and has at his disposal a chauffeur-driven car, a dacha in the country and rest and holiday homes in the mountains and at the seaside. He also has access to special shops and restaurants where only the best is on sale, at cheap prices. Every station and airport has a special waiting room reserved for members of the nomenklatura only. Since the death of Stalin, membership of the group is virtually for life; even if you make some mistake you are not expelled from its ranks, but only transferred to a less important post—and so you still keep the privileges. Similarly, and even official Russian sociological studies show this, the nomenklatura is tending to become hereditary: new members increasingly choose fathers who are also nomenklaturists. Voslensky says that the nomenklatura could be said to live in a separate country which he calls "Nomenklaturia":

Here are to be found special housing constructed by special firms, special country houses and special holiday centres, special cure homes, polyclinics and hospitals; special products sold in special shops; special cafeterias and canteens; special hairdressing salons and special car centres; special petrol pumps and special number plates; a special information service with wide ramifications; kindergartens, schools and boarding schools of special educational establishments (giving degrees), exclusive clubs where films are shown in exclusivity; special waiting rooms in stations and airports. And even a reserved cemetery. (pp. 249-250).

And these privileged exploiters hypocritically proclaim that classes have been abolished in Russia and that social equality reigns there! But the Russian people are not completely taken in, as shown by the following widely-circulating Russian joke which Voslensky quotes—Question: what is the difference between capitalism and communism? Answer: capitalism is based on the exploitation of man by man. Communism is the opposite.

Adam Buick

Obituary: George Dolphy (1981)

Obituary from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

We were shocked to learn of the sudden death from cancer of Comrade George Dolphy in Jamaica; a sad end to a socialist campaigner not yet 60 years old. George met the SPGB during his stay in Birmingham in the late 1950s, when he attended the local Branch, and he returned home to Jamaica a convinced socialist. He formed a small group and produced the country's first socialist journal, The Socialist Review. The following is an extract from the preamble in the first issue:

It is our job to bring the socialist message here and let people realise there is an alternative to the present social system. The only barrier to Socialism now is the lack of socialist knowledge among the working class. We have accepted the challenge of this barrier. 

After publishing ten issues, the group dispersed for various reasons and George, on his own, brought out the last few issues. In his own words: "I shan't let this thing die." His letters were always full of interesting socialist comment on the local scene, and he wrote at greater length for the Socialist Standard on a couple of occasions.

He suffered personally from the violence engendered by high unemployment and social instability in Jamaica and experienced robberies and severe disruption to his life. In spite of these difficulties he worked to spread socialist understanding to the end of his days. His death is a sad loss to the socialist movement and we must hope that at least some of the seed he sowed during the last 20 years will bear fruit. We have news of socialists in Trinidad and Martinique; we wish them success, following in the footsteps of George Dolphy.

G R Russell

Communist Party's racist policy (1981)

From the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

"STOP IMMIGRATION, official and illegal" is one of the campaign slogans for the French presidential elections next April of . . .  Georges Marchais, General Secretary and candidate of the French Communist Party (PCF). Those who imagine that a party calling itself "communist" must have some internationalist sentiments, however vague, will be surprised at this, but not those who know anything of the history and present policy of the PCF. The PCF is also in favour of the French H-bomb and has plastered walls throughout France with a poster saying "Produisons français" )"Produce French") and its anti-Germanism has to be seen and heard to be believed. So it is not really surprising that they should also have adopted a narrow, nationalist policy with regard to immigration.

On this issue their policy is virtually identical to that of the French government: no more immigration, encouragement of immigrants already in France to go back where they came from, more or less equal treatment for those who despite this still choose to stay. When Lionel Stoléru, the French Minister of Labour, declared on a visit to Metz in October that "there is no question of admitting a single new foreigner into France"(Républicain Lorrain, 15 October 1980), he expressed a sentiment the PCF echoes, only they accuse him of not being tough enough, of allowing illegal immigration to continue!

Two PCF councillors from the Paris suburb of Ivry-sue-Seine, interviewed in Le Monde of 4 November, were asked "You want a reduction in the number of immigrants. So you and Mr. Stoléru are in the same battle". They replied "He talks, but there are no measures". As if to confirm that this was not just the opinion of two low-ranking officials in a sensitive area, the next day the Political Bureau of the PCF repeated his view in an official declaration on "The Housing of Immigrant Workers" which was published in full in L'Humanité, the Party's official daily paper, on 6 November:

These workers have been called to France by employers and a government greedy for profits. Today, the government states that immigration must be stopped otherwise new French and immigrant workers will be thrown out of work. This is in their mutual interest. But M. Giscard d'Estaing's government and his Minister Stoléru do not do what they say. They contribute to the organised illegal entry of workers with no social rights with the aim of depressing the rights of French workers. We insist that these practices be ended and that the traffickers who engage in them be repressed. 

There are about 4 million immigrant workers, with their families, in France. Most of them are from Portugal, Spain and Italy but an appreciable number are from North Africa, especially Algeria, with a few from other former French colonies—Senegal, Mali—as well as refugees and others from Indo-China. There are also people from France's remaining colonies in the West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) and the Indian Ocean (Réunion) who are not officially immigrants since they are French citizens but in the popular mind are nevertheless still regarded as such. Prejudice against immigrants in France is directed overwhelmingly against Arabs and black people.

The immigrants in the Paris area have tended to settle, or rather have been forced by economic necessity to crowd together, in the poorer traditional working-class districts on the outskirts of Paris. Many of these districts have PCF mayors and it was from these mayors that the pressure came to launch the current PCF anti-immigration, not to say anti-immigrant campaign. The Secretary of the PCF federation in the Val-D'Oise department, Pierre Blotin, declared at a press conference at the beginning of October that "the rate of immigrants in the communist towns of Val-D'Oise is unacceptable and dangerous" (Républicain Lorrain, 10 October 1980). He complained that employers purposely directed immigrant workers towards PCF run towns rather than to better-off areas run by the other parties. The PCF leaders in the Val-de-Marne department on the other side of Paris took up this claim, alleging that the government's Prefects were also involved. But the prize in this anti-immigration auction must go to Lucien Lanternier, PCF mayor of Gennevilliers, just outside central Paris. He went so far as to organise a demonstration to demand that immigrants be housed in a empty block of flats up for sale in the nearby, posh suburb if Neuilly!* Interviewed in L'Humanité on 4th November, under the heading "Why Shouldn't Neuilly also Receive Some Immigrants?", he explained:

I learnt that the town of Neuilly, whose social composition is known to everyone, was going to put up for sale a large complex of about 30 apartments. I immediately wrote to the mayor of Neuilly as well as to M. Stoléru and the Prefect, for the sale to be suspended and for the apartments in question to be reserved for the rehousing of immigrant workers with large families who only aspire to live in decent conditions. M. Peretti [the mayor of Neuilly] informed me that he would meet me on 29 October but two days later, by telegram, he refused any meeting. He thus closed, with the agreement of M. Stoléru, the door to our propositions. The policy of racial and social segregation practised by the government and the elected representatives of the Right can thus be judged from the facts. This attitude is part of the Giscardian apartheid which wants to concentrate the immigrant workers in working class municipalities while certain towns and fine quarters are reserved for financial magnates and the rich. 

This is rather like the National Front in Britain demanding that Pakistanis be housed in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London rather than in Tower Hamlets! And of course it is pure demagogy on the part of the PCF mayor, though it could easily have back-fired since many "native" French workers from Gennevilliers might also have liked to be rehoused in Neuilly. The PCF mayor had in fact found a very clever way of indicating to those who had elected him that he understood their sentiments of "Arabs Out" and "Blacks Go Home" without actually having to utter such words himself. For on paper the PCF (like the government) is opposed to racism, but actions such as that of the mayor of Gennevilliers clearly show that the PCF is determined to exploit anti-immigrant feelings to pick up a few cheap votes in the coming presidential elections. Unlike in Britain most immigrants in France don't have the vote; only those from colonies like Guadeloupe and Martinique do. But in any case the PCs of these islands are not urging their supporters to vote for Georges Marchais, for a quite unrelated reason admittedly (they want independence from France).

Although the PCF avoids crude expressions of anti-immigrant prejudices it sails as close to the wind here as it can. The Politbureau statement published in L'Humanité openly states at one point that the interests of French workers must come before those of immigrant workers:

Communist elected representatives employ considerable efforts to harmonise the interests of all. Immigrant workers recognise what has been done in the municipalities run by communists. But in no way can this be done to the detriment of French workers (our emphasis).   

This, no doubt, is why the statement went on to say "we approve the communist elected representaives who limit the global volume of social aid to immigrants". In other words, when it comes to distributing the meagre aid for the destitute for housing, schooling, and so on immigrant workers must expect to be treated by PCF-controlled councils as second-class citizens. "Britons First" as the National Front in Britain would say.

Adam Buick

*Since this article was written the British press has reported yet further escalation in the PCF anti-immigrant campaign. Paul Mercieca, PCF mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine (Val de Marne department), in a bid to prevent some African immigrants being transferred to his town from a nearby non-PCF controlled area, went so far as to arrange for the vandalisation of the hostel set aside to receive them. (see The Times, 29 and 30 December 1980).

Holiday postscript (1981)

From the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Long before Christianity a festive break during the dark, cold winter months helped people to get through the most trying time of the year. To replace celebration of the winter solstice, early Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Christ on 25 December; historically incorrect, but necessary to combat the appeal of the heathen jollifications.

Whatever the excuse, the holiday is over. We have had our parties—probably eaten and drunk a bit too much, certainly spent more money than we meant or could afford and, thankfully, waved goodbye to relatives and friends whom we genuinely welcomed at the start of the holidays. Listening to the radio on New Year's Day, one particular thought came uppermost. Money—"vast profits" to quote the narrator in Woman's Hour—are made, particularly during the season of "Peace and Goodwill"—from belligerence. 

The Daily Telegraph, in a number of pre-Christmas items, mentioned that in spite of—or perhaps because of—unemployment and the "difficult times" people seemed determined to enjoy the holiday; toy shops were doing a good trade, and by far the most successfully selling lines were guns, soldiers and war games.

Supermarketing of 21 November reviewed the snacks market, which has grown from 85 million in 1970 to an estimated 450 million in 1980. 70 per cent of all snacks are eaten by children, although the purchasing is split 50/50 between parents and children. With such vast sums at stake, it is vital for manufacturers to "get their sums right" when launching new products, and it seems Smith's have done it again with their "Battle Bags". Their research team went out with over two dozen concepts like space, sport and war, but Frank Richardson, their marketing manager, said:

We have always believed that there is no long term mileage to be gained by associating our products with current crazes . . . We were therefore seeking a subject which . . . would have long-term appeal. War won hands down and so we decided to introduce Battle Tanks and Fighter Planes under the overall umbrella of the Battle Bags name.

The programme which started off this train of thought dealt with the huge success of computer games. Addicts and psychologists who were interviewed stated that the main appeal was that, to play successfully, one really had to stretch one's mind/ Concentration and involvement is such that they often found themselves shaking with nervous tension after a game. Apparently the most successful game is Space Wars, and it is ironic that the inventors of this, as well as the other games, are Japanese, who still commemorate in most dramatic fashion the horrific happenings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, let us end on a optimistic note. These computer games were originally invented to train space pilots in manipulation and navigation of their craft. The representative of one of the manufacturers foresaw games being produced which could be used to plan agriculture and the best use of resources, especially in under-developed countries. Used in this way, they would not only stimulate the mind, but help a socialist society to organise best use of the world's resources for the good of the world's community.

Eva Goodman