Editorial: Two budgets (1952)

Editorial from the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budgets are the concern of the capitalists, not of the working class, though it suits the Labour Party, like the other reformist parties, to pretend otherwise. The workers are not poor because of the Budget, but because the capitalist class own society’s means of production and distribution. It was admitted by the Economist (25th December, 1943) that:—

"1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent. of the adult persons in the country, own 85 per cent. of the private property and draw 28 per cent. of the individual incomes of the country."

The Economist said that their readers would be surprised to team this. Why they should be surprised was not explained; this inequality has been a feature of social life in Britain and the rest of the world throughout the capitalist era, and is equally true now despite all the talk of redistribution.

The capitalist State has to meet the cost of its civil service, armed forces and re-armament programmes and all the rest of the organisation necessary to the capitalist system. It does this through taxation the burden of which falls on the shoulders of those who alone can bear it, the propertied class. The wealth the workers produce belongs to the capitalist class and what the workers receive as wages and salaries is far below the value of what they, the workers, produce. That is how the workers are legally robbed and why they are poor. Rises or falls of prices, rises or falls of taxation and changes from one form to another, do not affect the fundamental position of the working class—at most they have temporary effects. White capitalism continues, the only sound policy for the working class is to struggle at all times to the fullest extent that conditions permit, to raise their wages and resist downward pressure.

During and since the war, under the abnormal conditions then existing, and with unemployment at a very low level, successive governments used the system of food subsidies in order to discourage the trade unions from pressing for higher wages. It was linked with high taxation on drink and tobacco, and, from 1946, the grant of children’s allowances to level the condition of the workers. The whole scheme was a device to lessen the movement for a general rise of wages and to divide the married workers against the unmarried. With it went the incessant demand of the Labour Government that the workers should refrain from "unreasonable” wage claims. Now that the fierce struggle against foreign competitors is hotting up again in the markets of the world, the policy is being modified because it has served its purpose. It was merely a wartime interlude in the running of capitalism, which is now getting back to normal pre-war conditions.

Against this background it will be seen how nonsensical is the Labour Party case against the Butler budget. They call is a “rich man’s budget,” as if any budget could be anything else. Mr. Douglas Jay, Labour M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on 17th March, accused Mr. Butler of "robbing the poor to pay the rich”—as if the details of any particular budget were of any importance by comparison with the ceaseless exploitation of the working class \\hich went on unchanged during six years of Labour government.

They charge the Tories with raising the cost of living, forgetting that while they were in power it went up about 40 per cent. They say that he is against wage increases, as of course he is, but forgetting the years in which they also preached "wage-restraint.” They denounce him for reducing food subsidies, but forget that it was Sir Stafford Cripps who decided not to permit any increase in the subsidies even though that meant a rise of the cost of living; a flat departure from the statement of his predecessor, Mr. Dalton, who in 1945 said:—

“I have decided to hold the present cost of living steady until further notice, even if this means an increase in the necessary Exchequer subsidies." (Hansard, 23rd October, 1945. Col. 1877.)

It was on that occasion that Mr. Dalton admitted the purpose of the subsidies as being "to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates,” and paid tribute to the "steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard.”

In April, 1951, when Mr. Gaitskell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeated the decision not to increase the food subsidies, he admitted that this decision would mean a further rise of food prices and indeed the official food index figure rose from 131 in April, 1951, to 143 in October.

Other Labour Party critics charge the Tories with tenderness towards high profits, and one misguided Labour journal Forward, in its issue for 23rd February, 1952, chides the Tories on the ground that company profits repented during January, 1952, were up by £10,000,000. What it overlooked was that the company reports issued in January, 1952, related to profits made under the Labour Government in 1951!

Now that the Labour Party is in Opposition it will wage the sham fight about the details of running the capitalist system, but there was every justification for the jibe of the Liberal leader, Mr. Clement Davies, that if Mr. Gaitskell had been in Mr. Butler's place his Budget would have been "much of a muchness.” All budgets, no matter who introduces them, are designed to promote capitalism, not to undermine or abolish it.

Mr. Butler’s budget of 11th March had been preceded on 6th March by the budget report of the Russian Finance Minister, Mr. Zverev. They differed by five days, and little more.

The Russian Budget

The Russian Finance Minister’s budget report was reproduced in full in Soviet News (12th March, 1952) published by the Russian Embassy in London. It makes interesting reading particularly as evidence of the similarity of capitalism's problems and their treatment in the two countries.

They both have their re-armament problems; naturally both offered as instruments of “ defence,” not of "aggression.”

In 1952 the Russian Government plans to spend "for the defence of the country” 113,800 million roubles (£10,346,000,000 at the Russian official rate of exchange of 11 roubles to the £).

The amount of money to be raised from State loans in 1952 is set at £3,864 millions, and the estimated expenditure on the lottery prizes and interest to bondholders (“to pay out winnings to the population and interest on loans”) is estimated at £800 million. This latter figure relates, of course, to the interest, etc., on the total amount of loans outstanding, not merely to the additional loans to be raised during the year; at the average rate of 4 per cent. it implies that the total amount of bonds outstanding in 1952 will be about £20,000 million.

Turnover Tax (similar to the British purchase tax) brought into Budget revenues in 1951 the amount of £22,500 millions, an increase of 4.9 per cent. over 1950. It is to be increased this year by another 4.9 per cent. 

Mr Butler stepped up the taxes on profits by means of the Excess Profits Levy. His opposite number in Russia, Mr. Zverev, is going to do the same.

“Total profits in the branches of the national economy will amount to 88,100 million roubles in the current year as against 74,700 million roubles in 1951. The rise in profits makes it possible to leave a substantial part of them at the disposal of enterprises and Ministries for expanding production. At the same time, the profits tax paid into the State Budget will be increased and the share of this tax in the State Budget revenue will rise from 10.2 per cent. in 1951 to 12.2 per cent. in 1952.”

“The profits tax paid by State enterprises will be increased by 14,000 million roubles, or 29.2 per cent. more than last year. . ."

Conservative and Labour Party speakers are always urging the workers to produce more and lower the cost of production. Mr. Zverev’s report contained numerous remarks of the same kind. He reported that in 1951 “the labour productivity of workers in industry rose, by 10 per cent. compared with 1950.” But he was not satisfied with this and asked for more. His report also contained many complaints about industries which had failed to keep down their wages bill and operate sufficiently profitably:—

"It should be said that certain Ministries, enterprises and economic organisations are for from making full use of available potentialities for the further reduction of production costs, cutting trade outlays and making the work of economic organisations more profitable.”

“One of the main requisites for the further reduction of production costs is also the improvement of the organisation of labour at enterprises and the frugal expenditure of wage funds. Not all enterprises, however, live up to those requirements.”

For example, he complained that the Ministry of Paper and Woodworking Industry “permitted the mills to cover the over-expenditure of the wage fund,” and the Leningrad engineering plant of the Central Textile Machinery Administration of the Ministry of Machine and Instrument-making Industry “did not fulfil its production plans last year and overspent 13,500,000 roubles on wages.”

Time and time again he came back to this theme of not spending too much on wages, improving the control of “labour per unit of output,” and watching over “the expenditure of wage funds” and of “the timely and complete receipt of payments into the Budget.” Numerous branches of industry were named as being among those which illegally “overdraw the wage funds.” Others were charged with allowing expensive machinery “to stand idle a great deal,” thus adding to production costs, and many State farms were criticised because they “do not yet have a sufficiently high productivity of labour.”

We are told by Communists that in Russia the trade unions have control over the fixing of wages. What they do have (a very different matter) is the right to discuss the way the “wages fund” is allocated to different grades of workers; but of course the real control resides with those who fix the total amount of the wage fund for each enterprise, that is the Government and its agencies. How true this is can be seen from the Finance Minister’s report. Not once does he even mention as a possibility that the workers or the unions might have pressed for a bigger expenditure on wages. In each of the dozen cases that he refers to he tells the managements firmly that once the Government has fixed the wage fund they have got to stick to it and devote their energies to cutting down production costs and increasing the workers’ output.

British capitalism’s financial wizards and productivity experts would feel very much at home if transplanted to Mr. Zverev’s department.

It is only necessary to add that the Budget Report was unanimously approved. The session ended as follows, according to the Soviet News account:—

“Stormy, prolonged applause. All rise. A prolonged ovation in honour of Comrade J. V. Stalin resounds in the Kremlin Palace.”

It seems to have been like the Tory cheers for Mr. Butler.

The Socialist comment on British and Russian budgets is simplicity itself. The aim of the working class should be to end private and State capitalism and bring the means of production and distribution into ownership by the whole community as the basis of Socialism. While the workers continue to neglect this real issue and devote their attention instead to capitalism’s budgets and taxation they will remain a poverty-stricken exploited class and the exploiters will continue to be safe in the enjoyment of the privileged position that capitalism bestows on them.

The Rise and Fall of Clause Four (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1918 the Labour Party transformed itself into a national organisation. At the same time it adopted a list of Party Objects, the fourth of which read: ‘To secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service.”

This was the nearest the Labour Party ever came to committing itself on paper to Socialism, since this could be interpreted as a somewhat wordy definition of real Socialism not all that different from the Object we in the Socialist Party adopted when we were founded in 1904: ‘The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”

However, since it was drawn up by the Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and since the Fabians stood for a state capitalism run by an educated elite, it was meant to be understood as a reference to state ownership, or nationalisation, i.e. state capitalism.

This was confirmed when in 1929, as a result of left-wing pressure to commit the Labour Party to the nationalisation of the banks, the words “distribution and exchange” were added after “the common ownership of the means of production”. This made it absolutely clear that what was envisaged was not real socialism but state capitalism.

To talk of the common ownership of the means of exchange is a contradiction in terms. Where there is common ownership there can be no exchange since exchange can only take place between separate owners, i.e. where private ownership not common ownership exists. In a socialist society based on common ownership goods are simply distributed not exchanged, so there is no need for money, banks and the rest of the financial system.

After Labour lost the 1959 election the then leader Gaitskill tried to get rid of Clause 4 on the grounds that it was an electoral liability, but had to back down in face of the opposition. Now Tony Blair is going to try again, with more chance of success it appears.

In a sense he his right: Labour does not stand for state capitalism – it stands for working within the present profit-driven market system dominated privately-owned companies. It stands for capitalism pure and simple. The dropping of Clause 4 will merely make this absolutely clear.

Wasting time at the seaside (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is very considerate of the Labour, Liberal and Conservative Parties to hold their annual conferences in the autumn.

At any rate, the seaside hotel keepers must think so, because the conferences bring them some welcome business just as the season is dying; and so must all those seaside landladies, who can keep the secret machines which put lumps into the porridge and burn the toast in profitable operation for another week or so. There is even the sea, which everyone expects to be cold in the autumn, allowing politicians to prove what lovable eccentrics they are by having themselves photographed taking a dip.

It is all good fun, although since the object of it is to win the game of power politics it can hardly be described as clean. But more than other any other reason for feeling grateful for the autumn conferences is that they provide us with something to chuckle over in the long, dark evenings ahead.

There are two types of annual conferences. One sort is run by the parties which are out of power; a certain amount of freedom is allowed here. In most cases—although there have been some famous exceptions, of which more later critics can be treated indulgently, as living proof of ruthless self-criticism, a restless drive for new ideas and a young, zestful heart.

When, for example, Edward Heath was asked on television what he thought about the prospects of receiving a lot of criticism of his leadership at this year’s Tory conference he replied, with a huge grin, that he enjoyed conferences and would be there all the time. Jo Grimond, far from being upset at the noisy activities of the Young Liberals at their conference, went out of his way to praise them and was photographed having an amiable drink with some of them.

There is no such carefree goodwill towards the rebels in a party which is in power. At their conferences the leaders on the platform, are trying to justify broken promises, to explain away diametrical changes in policy and, above all, to convince everyone that, although the present times are hard, with patience and support and unity all will be well. In this situation, critics are not welcomed as a stimulus; they are condemned—sometimes outlawed—as traitors to their party and to what politicians like to call the country.

There are many weary hours to be spent in the conference hall, and it is common for the newspaper men to try to brighten these up a little by fastening their attention upon some so-called personality of the conference. This usually means a lot of publicity for someone who, although he does no more than repeat the same weary platitudes and misconceptions which have been heard so many times before, wakes everybody up by sounding as if he actually believed what he says.

So it was this year with the Young Liberals, who came storming down to Brighton to demand all sorts of reckless things like “workers control” in industry (the inverted commas are intended, and necessary). These young people laid about them and one of them went so far as to shatter the peace of the conference by swearing—or at any rate he said “bloody” and “damn”, which in this age of Kenneth Tynan probably no longer rate as swear words.

The newspapers loved it and decided that no title would be appropriate for the Young Liberals short of Jo Grimond’s Red Guards. It is interesting to wonder what the fanatical young hooligans in Peking would think about being compared with a few hysterical students daring to say “bloody” to an assembly of Liberals on an autumn afternoon at an English seaside resort.

Such, however, are the ways of the press, which also has a liking for putting the finger on what they consider to be political stars of the future who enter the limelight at a conference. This is what the papers did some years back to Ray Gunter, who has now risen so far and so fast that he has the important job of implementing the very policy on wages which his party once scorned. This year, at the TUC, some reporters decided that Leslie Cannon, President of the Electrical Trade Union, showed by his speech that he is a future MP, perhaps even a Minister.

It is hardly necessary to point out that to win this nomination for future stardom a man has to agree with official policy. No member of the Labour Party has ever been selected as a rising leader after making an attack, no matter how capable, on his party’s line on wages or nuclear armaments; Frank Cousins, the most prominent of the critics on those issues, has always been regarded as something of a joke. Still less would a person be noticed for attacking the fundamentals of the Labour Party—its capitalist policies, its obsession with leadership, its unavoidable failure. The newspapers have their own standards of success and they are sticking by them.

Behind all the ballyhoo and the alleged drama and excitement what are conferences for? Every man in the street knows that they are supposed to lay down their party's policy and to take decisions based on that policy. A simple man in a backward street may even think that, because the capitalist parties profess to be democratic, the decisions taken by their conference delegates are binding.

The first thing to say about this is that some of the delegates’ votes are cast in ways which are anything but an expression of their members’ opinions. At this year’s Labour conference the voting policy of the Amalgamated Engineering Union changed suddenly from support of the government to opposition. This was not because the AEU delegates had received different instructions from their members. It simply happened that their leader, Bank of England director Sir William Carron, who is an unmovable supporter of the government, left Brighton for a meeting of the board of the Fairfield shipyard.

This apparently left the AEU delegation floundering, until a series of other absences gave the leadership to Hugh Scanlon, who is generally critical of the government. The result of this was that the AEU, voting as whoever was their leader at the time wished, was one day for the government and another against it.

Yet even without this sort of maneouvering, the votes of a conference are anything but decisive. Labour this year declared several times in favour of the government—on wage freezing, Rhodesia, foreign policy. But when the conference went the other way on other issues—redundancy, Germany and support for America over Vietnam—Ministers made it plain that they would take no notice. It was all summed up by Harold Wilson himself, in one word, when he asked what he intended to do about the famous Cousins victory over work sharing—“Govern”.

This has of course happened before. In 1959, when Labour was licking its wounds after Macmillan had thrashed them at the polls, they decided at one of their rowdiest conferences not to follow Hugh Gaitskell’s advice to delete Clause Four from their constitution. So in theory, and by conference decision, the Labour. Party stands for the sort of capitalism where all the means of production, distribution and exchange are nationalised. But of course they have not the slightest intention of doing anything about it.

Poor Gaitskell had a knack of infuriating his party’s conferences. Another example of a refusal to accept inconvenient decisions was when, after the 1960 vote in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, he declared his intention to “fight, fight and fight again” and, because on that occasion some of the big unions had voted against him, questioned the morality of the block vote which had always been accepted as long as it docilely accepted the policy of the platform:

I sometimes think, firmly, that the system we have by which great unions decide their policy before even their conference can consider their executive's recommendation is not really a wise one or a good one.

It is clear that when a conference agrees with its leaders it is the authentic voice of democracy, rich in wisdom. When it disagrees it is irresponsible and treacherous. The peculiar thing is that, although the members of the capitalist parties must know this very well, they are still prepared to be delegates to their conferences, they still work for their party, they still welcome its taking power.

The plain fact is that whatever a conference may decide, a party’s policy is already fixed. No matter how bloodthirstily the Tory hangers and floggers pursued their prey at conference, Conservative Home Secretaries stuck out for penal reform. No matter what support the Rhodesia lobby gathers, the Conservative leadership must agree that the Smith regime should be brought to an end.

Similarly, even if the 1960 vote on nuclear weapons had not been reversed, no Labour government would have surrendered the British Bomb simply because their conference had told them to. Whichever way the vote went on this year’s battle over incomes, the government's mind was made up and the more coercive Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Bill was ready to be brought into operation.

And while we are on the subject, there is something which we should notice about the Prices and Incomes Bill. It is the first openly anti-trade union legislation for something like 40 years—and it is the work of a party which came into existence as a result of a conference decision of February, 1900, to establish

a distinct labour group in Parliament . . . which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour and . . . with any party in opposing measures having an opposite tendency.

What, we asked, are conferences for? Even if their decisions can be, and are, ignored they are often an opportunity for a party to pronounce on its policy. Perhaps some people may prefer to describe this as warning the working class what to expect, or as making the promises the breaking of which later conferences will have to explain away. In 1963, for example, Labour was hypnotised by the Wilson vision of a technological Britain, with a wise government guiding massive investment into the “science based” industries, with technicians enthusiastically at work in their laboratories and at their drawing boards and with everyone’s wages going up in a nice, steady, organised curve. It was all very good for the headlines, for the electoral image and all the other political public relations man's obsessions.

It usually happens that at such times there is so much concern with a party’s public image that nobody notices the policies which are being expounded from the platform do not amount to much. Consider George Brown’s unoriginal idea of settling the Vietnam war by recalling the Geneva conference—the very conference which first set up the division of the country and so played its part in bringing about the present war there.

At other times the publicity a conference receives can be disastrous for the party, like the 1960 Labour uproar over CND and the public spectacle of Tory leaders savaging each other as they clawed for the place left vacant by Macmillan’s retirement during the 1963 Blackpool conference.

Or a conference can be an outlet for a party's donkey workers. It can give them a break from the hard slog of committee work, canvassing, addressing. They can come to express their doubts and disappointments, to wonder what happened to the visions they once had, Then they can stifle their doubts, admire their leaders and finally submerge themselves in what they call loyalty, but for which there is an unkinder if more accurate name, at a mass rally. Then they can go back to the donkey work with renewed energy.

No conference ever probes, or even discusses the facts. No resolution ever says that the parties of capitalism exist to run the social system which oppresses and degrades millions of human beings, that this system can only be run in the interests of a minority and to the detriment of the majority. Labour’s “left wing” come to their conferences convinced that they are looking for the lost soul of their party—none of them points out, perhaps none of them realises, that a capitalist party is bound to deceive, to override its members’ wishes and to disappoint its followers by pushing through unpleasant and inhuman measures.

Conferences make a lot of noise, exhale a lot of hot air, attract a lot of publicity. But when it is all over, when the delegates have gone home and the hall has been cleared and the seaside has sunk back into its out-of-season doze, one thing is abundantly clear.

It was all a waste of time.

Ivan

The Leader and the Labour Party (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Scarborough it was outwardly politics that were being discussed, but the Leader and his supporters were also on trial. The questions were what should be the policy and who should be the leader.

On the main resolutions decisions were reached which will hold unless and until they are reversed, but the question of leadership was not decided, though various groups which think it was are looking round for Gaitskell's successor.

On different aspects of the dominating issue of nuclear weapons there were four resolutions, and Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour Party executive were defeated on all of them, though not by large majorities. It was a severe but perhaps not yet fatal blow for Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour M.Ps, the majority of whom stood for the official policy.

A resolution was carried that “Labour policy is decided by the Party conference which is the final authority,” but the executive gave it an interpretation which seems to rob it of much of its meaning. Mr. Len Williams, the Party's National Agent, told the Conference that “the Parliamentary Labour Party” (that is, the Labour M.Ps.) is under no direction from conference or any other body. Mr. Williams said the National Executive did not wish to oppose the composite resolution if it was understood that it involved no change in the long-established principle governing relationships between conferences, National Executive and Parliamentary Party. And it had to be understood that nobody had the power to instruct the Parliamentary Party on the way it carried out its responsibilities." (Daily Herald, 5/10/60.)

And the day after the Conference Mr. Gaitskell made it clear that he has no present intention of resigning and on the contrary is preparing to overturn the Scarborough votes. Speaking in a TV interview he declared: “I regard it as absolutely vital that we should reverse this decision at next year's conference and I shall do everything I can to get that done.” (Daily Mail, 9/10/60.)

He also gave it as his opinion that the Parliamentary Labour Party will by a majority support the policy defeated by the delegates at Scarborough, the implication of which is that they will also confirm him in the Leadership, which incidentally carries with it the leadership of the Opposition at a government- provided salary of £3,000 a year.

Many Tory and Liberal newspapers, while criticising and regretting Mr. Gaitskell’s unsuccessful tactics, lavished praise on him and openly hoped that he may survive his defeat by Conference.

But whether he goes or stays the prospect for the Labour Party is bleak indeed. In the constituencies and in Parliament there will be rival groups each determined to put their point of view, and laying the Party wide open to attack from Tories and Liberals. This may, as the Liberal leaders proclaim, give them an opportunity to win back former supporters who joined the Labour Party. One political commentator, Mr. Robert McKenzie, thinks that even if Mr. Gaitskell survives for the moment it will solve nothing for the Party. His opponents will regard it as a cynical trick that Mr. Gaitskell only claims the right to defy the Trade Union block vole when it ceased to support his policy.

It is almost inevitable that the victims of this “trick” will fight on, either until they are expelled from the parliamentary party, or until Gaitskell himself is destroyed. And as the next election looms ahead, even some of those who admire Mr. Gaitskell's courage may decide that he must make way for someone who has at least a chance of reuniting the party.

(Observer, 9/10/60)

His own opinion, and hope, is that a new anti-H-Bomb Labour Party will be formed and that the Gaitskell faction will then come to terms with the Liberals.

Another danger for the Labour Party is that the conflict will lead to loss of some trade union support and may influence relationships between the Party and the TUC. Sir Thomas Williamson. Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers Union told conference that some of the branches would withdraw support from the Labour Party if the anti-nuclear resolutions were carried. (Daily Telegraph. 6/10/60.) The correspondent of The Times (7/10/60) reported that events at the conference had strengthened the already existing movement to reduce or sever the TUC’s connection with the Party.

It is an accepted convention of professional politics that the politician always claims to speak “for the people or, as he sometimes qualifies it—“for all intelligent people.” It is not so easy to decide what a Labour Party conference vote represents. Mr. Cousins claimed that he speaks “for Britain ,” a claim that Tory newspapers angrily rejected. Out of more than 22 million workers in this country, of whom 9,600,000 are in trade unions, the TUC has in its affiliated unions about 8 million, and the Labour Party 5,600,000. If Labour Party conference votes represented the views of its affiliated trade unionists and the additional 875,000 individual members who belong to local parties, cooperative societies, etc., they could be taken as representing directly the considered wishes of the majority among 6 million workers. (A large, but unknown number of the individual members also count as part of the affiliated trade union membership). But Labour Party spokesmen are well aware that their voting methods, including the trade union block vote, can produce distorted results. Even so, the claim of the Daily Herald (which now supports the H-bomb) that the great majority of Labour supporters are with them on that issue is, to say the least, somewhat surprising. According to a poll undertaken by Odhams Press Research Division “an overwhelming majority of Labour supporters and trade unionists are against the West giving up H-bombs and nuclear weapons so long as Russia keeps hers . . . . more than four out of five Labour supporters think that Britain and America should keep the bomb.” (Daily Herald, 4/10/60.)

There are, of course, sceptics who think that public opinion polls may be no more accurate than block votes.

The Guardian shares the Herald's view of the vote and roundly declared that the Conference is not democratic “while it is governed by trade union block votes. . . . There is no democracy in giving Mr. Cousins one million votes. As the world will probably see today, one or two men can turn Labour's policy upside down.” (Guardian, 5/10/60.)

Mr. Gaitskell, defeated on the H-bomb, gained the day on a policy statement which in effect discards old aims of wholesale nationalisation, and puts in their place the possibility of nationalising a few selected industries, together with the plan for a Labour Government to buy shares in companies without taking them over. It recognises that “both public and private ownership have a place in society.” Delegates speaking in opposition called it “underwriting capitalism” and the abandonment of “Socialism.” Mr. Gaitskell retorted that the proposals were just as much “Socialist” as is Nationalisation, a fact on which Socialists can heartily agree, since nationalisation is state capitalism and has never been advocated by the S.P.G.B.

While the delegates were maintaining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they still believe in nationalisation as the answer to the workers’ problems, strikes were going on in the nationalised coal industry (they break out at the rate of over 30 a week year after year), the Railwaymen were preparing for a strike over pay and Postal workers were discussing a strike resolution over hours of work. And it would seem from the rent strikes and the riots that followed forcible eviction of council tenants by a local council that nationalisation's little sister municipal ownership is no less unpopular.

The day that the Daily Herald reported the vote on the policy of the government buying company shares it reported developments in the direction of a little private enterprise by the local Labour parties themselves. They are planning to form a Unit Trust to invest their funds in company shares and thus cash in on the rise in the profits and prices of ordinary shares that has accompanied inflation. A trade union Unit Trust is already being organised.

Edgar Hardcastle

How Labour changed (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

1. 1906. 29 trade unionist MPs elected with Liberal support constitute themselves as the parliamentary Labour Party.
2. 1918. The party adopts a new constitution, Clause Four of which reads: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.
3. 1929. An amendment added ‘distribution and exchange’, spelling out that nationalisation (state capitalism), not socialism, was what was envisaged. (Link)
4. 1935. ‘A Labour government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’ (Clement Attlee, Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42).
5. 1945. General election manifesto: ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’
6. 1956. Labour intellectual Anthony Crosland published The Future of Socialism in which he argued that the aim of a more equal distribution of wealth did not require the nationalisation of industry.
7. 1959. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell proposes to abandon Clause Four but this is turned down by the Labour Party conference.
8. 1974. February general election manifesto: ‘It is indeed our intention to (a) bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.
9. 1995. New Clause Four adopted: ‘A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.
10. 2024. ‘Labour is the party of business’ (Starmer). ‘Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.’ (Link )

The Political Background 1904-74 (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed there have been nineteen general elections in which the working class have testified to their faith that it is possible to reform capitalism in the interests of the majority and that the differences between politicians are real.

This conception can be lived with only by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. The last seventy years is littered with broken promises and declarations. Lloyd George urging men into the trenches with his picture of them returning to Homes fit for Heroes; Jimmy Thomas burbling that he had “the complete cure” for unemployment (1930, just before the number out of work climbed to an all-time high); Wilson’s “new age” of technology. And the numerous pledges to provide us all with a rising standard of living.

The SPGB came into existence about the same time as the Labour Party. In the 1906 election of a Liberal government, there were 52 MPs from the new Labour Party, claiming to represent trade-union interests but promising to flower into a full-blown reformist party:

. . . It will require all our collective efforts to break down the forces of privilege and monopoly that have so long dominated the political life of this country.

That reads like Harold Wilson, promising to clean things up in 1974; in fact it is Arthur Henderson, celebrating Labour’s triumph in 1906.

But the tide receded and the Labour Party was losing seats in 1914. Labour leaders who had mouthed slogans about international working-class unity became patriots, joined the war government and persuaded workers to join up. In contrast, Socialists were standing against the war. That was no easy time to resist. Our propaganda was restricted, our members thrown into prison or forced to go on the run. The SPGB hung on, and there are many stories told of how we did it.

In 1918 the working class looked hopefully for all the speeches to become reality. They reasoned that the men who had organized mass murder should organize something in peacetime and the result was an overwhelming victory for Lloyd George’s coalition. Then came unemployment with its lines at the Labour Exchanges and ex-servicemen selling matches in gutters.

At this time a man who was to deceive the working class for a long time emerged. Stanley Baldwin’s vote-winning image was of the pipe-smoking, country-loving Englishman, which went down well with the workers, even those who had never seen a green field. In truth Baldwin was among the craftiest of political operators.

Baldwin battled to get rid of Lloyd George, and eventually accomplished it. (In the opinion of A. J. P. Taylor, Lloyd George was ". . . the first Prime Minister since Walpole to leave office flagrantly richer than he entered it.” The same could not be said for the people he had ruled over, buried among the battlefields of Europe or sunk in despair.) In 1923 Baldwin tried to persuade the workers that a tariff on imports would cure unemployment, and on that issue fought an election. He failed and for the first time Labour was in office.

Labour supporters rejoiced while their leader Ramsey MacDonald confessed himself “appalled at the poorness of the material” on the Labour benches. Anyone who feared wild revolutionaries was reassured when MacDonald, in full Court dress, showed that British traditions were to remain unharmed. But MacDonald’s government lasted only nine months.

The period which followed held the General Strike, which has been called a great betrayal of the working class. In truth, had the strikers been conscious of their class interests, betrayal would have been impossible. Their leaders were not traitors but expressions of the strikers’ lack of that consciousness. It was a bitter episode for the trade unions and the Labour Party.

By 1929 unemployment had reached serious proportions. In desperation, the workers tried another Labour government, again dependent on the Liberals. In 1931 unemployment reached nearly three million. MacDonald insisted that capitalism needed the unemployed to consume less, and took Snowden, Thomas and others to join Liberals and Tories in a National Government. The workers were allowed to join in the applause for this act of statesmanship; they elected 554 National MPs against only 52 to Labour.

Meanwhile in Germany, the Nazis harnessed working-class despair to rampant nationalism. They were the first steps towards the next war. One effect of that was to revive the Labour Party through support for Winston Churchill — Churchill, who never hid his contempt for the working class. Of course Labour leaders did get jobs in the Churchill government, sharing responsibility for the slaughter of millions.

Again, Socialists opposed that war and were made to suffer. Our stand was clearly justified when from the post-war election emerged the first majority Labour government. Many of its ministers had learned to run capitalism in co-operation with Churchill and the Tories during the war. The new government promised better relations with Russia; they brought in reforms in the social and medical services which would, they told us, end poverty; and they could apply their schemes of nationalization.

The Labour government, with its Foreign Secretary Bevin, fought out the first days of the Cold War, which on occasion came near a hot World War. The health service was a more efficient method of servicing workers back to work. Nationalization was discredited. One of the ministers in that government, Alfred Robens, later said of the nationalization schemes he had championed:

I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalizing these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us that they were going to turn into state capitalism. (The Times, 1 April 1968)

“We are the masters now” said Attorney General Hartley Shawcross, but Labour looked anything but masters. Their response to crises was to try to force down working-class standards; to keep conscription; to start a hydrogen bomb. Charges on the Health Service caused a storm of protest led by Aneurin Bevan. By the next election the Labour Party was broken; in October 1951 Churchill returned. There was little difference between the two parties. This may have contributed to a mood of cynicism and apathy which oppressed political activity in Britain for several years.

In 1955 Churchill, so far into his dotage that he was an embarrassment, handed over to Anthony Eden, one of the glamour boys of British politics. But Eden’s rule turned out anything but a romance. British capitalism was in retreat as the mighty sphere of control, mineral resources and markets once known as the British Empire had shrunk. Most politicians had accepted the reality but Eden seemed to live in another world. In the Middle East, British oil interests had been badly damaged by nationalist takeovers. When a new government in Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Eden ordered an invasion of Egypt and in the resultant uproar he lost not only the Canal but his job as Prime Minister.

Eden was replaced by Macmillan, who looked and spoke like an Edwardian fop but knew how to outmanoeuvre opponents and deceive the voters. Macmillan’s party seemed in ruins and Labour hopes were high : the new leader Gaitskell appeared to be convinced that power lay within his grasp. His chance came in 1959, but when the votes were counted he was openly aghast at his party’s defeat.

Disappointed not to find himself Prime Minister, he tried to persuade Labour to say that what they had been advocating was wrong : such as the meaningless Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution, which was interpreted to mean outright nationalization. The result was an enormous battle at a Labour conference in 1959, when Gaitskell bluntly put his reason: “Nationalization,” he said, “is a vote loser.” The following year the Labour Party was in uproar again, as unilateralists fought for the abandonment of British nuclear arms. Gaitskell was not worried about having to take notice of conference decisions; what did concern him was that such decisions would be unpopular among the workers and damage the chances of returning to government.

Soon, however, Macmillan’s Tory government, caught up in another economic crisis, made an assault upon wages. Partly in an attempt to win back popularity Macmillan sacked part of his Cabinet, applied to join the Common Market and pushed the first racist laws on to the Statute Book, in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. As these bids failed, Macmillan was doomed and the Profumo scandal in 1963 damaged him beyond repair. He resigned and Douglas-Home was appointed — by what one disappointed aspirant described as the “magic circle” of the Conservative Party.

But Home was simply not up to the job. Harold Wilson (who became Labour’s leader after Gaitskell died in 1963) rang rings round him, although when the election came in 1964, the Labour Party scraped home with the slimmest of majorities. Hoping that capitalism would not blow up a storm too soon, Wilson stated Labour’s aim to control wages :

For a Labour Government, no less than for the Conservatives, success or failure In the battle against inflation would depend on its ability to secure an understanding with the unions which would make wage restraint possible. (The Guardian, 25 October 1957)

A “Department of Economic Affairs” was set for the attack on working-class standards. It told everyone that the “norm” for wage rises was to be 3½ per cent, a year and we would all have to work harder.

Nevertheless, when Wilson timed another election for 1966 he got an increased majority. He was “Britain’s clever little man” (The Economist, 26 February 1966), Kosygin, the Russian ruler, is reputed to have said: “Sometimes I think you must have joined the Labour Party to save it from Socialism.”

Pundits are still analyzing the fall of the Wilson government in 1970. They had outdone the Tories in racist legislation, imposed statutory restraint on wages, supported the American war in Vietnam, kept up the British nuclear armoury. Having abolished prescription charges, they brought them back again. They made another attempt to get into the Common Market, and sketched out their plans for anti-trade union laws. Whatever the workers thought, many businessmen approved :

. . . I have had to rather reluctantly recognise that the current Socialist administration seems to have a better appreciation of business matters than did its Conservative predecessors. (Frank Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds, The Guardian, 27 October 1966)

Edward Heath’s alternative was a refusal to apply statutory controls because, apparently, if wages and prices were left to their own levels we should be swamped in prosperity. In practice his government became famous for changes in policy, but failed to hold down prices, which ran higher than ever; eventually it too imposed controls, and the anti-union laws which had been among the ambitions of Labour and Tories. In a confused election, Heath was turned out. Wilson promised workers that he would get them back to work — and they cheered him, like galley-slaves cheering the whip.

This has been the background to the seventy years of the Socialist Party’s life. We have seen the working class oscillate between Liberals, Labour and Conservative, forgetting the past. Seventy years and still capitalism is entrenched. The working class have misused the vote, which can bring into being a society of human wellbeing. The work of the Socialist is to show its proper use.

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Co-operative Movement at a dead end (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few months ago Reynolds News, the Co-operative Sunday newspaper, came out in its new form as the Sunday Citizen. Whatever other reasons for the change there may have been, doubtless the fall in circulation of the old paper from 720,0000 in 1947 to 310,000 in 196I has something to do with the effort to appeal to a new circle of readers. We do not know whether the change has won new readers, but we can tell what readership one of their regular contributors has in mind. He is Scorpio, "Sunday Citizen Economic Expert," who has a column headed Your Money. In the issue for October 21st he urged his readers “ Buy Oil Shares":

My advice has always been that you can't get high income yield, security against loss, quick access to your money, and hope of capital growth all at once.

Today I suggest a chance to come much nearer having it all four ways than you will often get. Buy some British Petroleum or Burmah Oil shares or, better, some of both.

Scorpio, or his editor, obviously thinks that no newspaper can be complete and up-to-date without a city column in which readers are helped with their investment problems. The Sunday Citizen has to keep up with the Jones’s of Fleet Street — what they do it must do, too.

And if Scorpio were to ask what is wrong with a Co-operative newspaper trying to have as wide an appeal as any other Sunday paper, the answer is that there is everything wrong with this particular venture, that of advising workers to risk what little savings they have (or some of them have) in buying shares.

In the first place it is a very dangerous game for workers to play. The inducement is the belief that they can make money. So they may at backing horses, and just as easily lose it. Scorpio's particular advice may turn out to be based on a correct guess about the future of the oil industry and of these two companies but, like all the other City recommendations it can be little more than a guess.

Very much to the point, how does it come about that a newspaper which belongs to the Co-operative Movement is not telling its readers to put their spare money into the Co-operative movement which so badly needs it?

There was a time when enthusiastic co-operators would have been shocked to find in their own Press someone who had so little belief in co-operation. Probably few readers are shocked today because, as a movement aiming at social change, co-operation has long been dead. More worrying still to many of its officials it hasn’t even been holding its own as a capitalist trading group in competition with commercial rivals. 

From the standpoint of the original solid aims of the movement probably few of its more than 12 million members even know what the original aims were. Some of them may have heard of Robert Owen and of the Rochdale Pioneers who formed a co-operative society in 1844, but few will know that for Owen and for the Rochdale Group the trading society was looked on not as an end in itself but as a means to revolutionise society:

. . . . Owen was not interested in "store keeping”. He wanted to set up self-supporting and self-governing villages of co-operation, organised committees providing work and happiness for their members. At first he advocated these as a means of over-coming unemployment, but later he broadened his plan to embrace all mankind.

(The Co-operative Movement. Published by the Labour Party.)

Such aims have been long forgotten as the co-operative movement enrolled its members by the million and gave them the satisfaction of their dividend on purchases. In the co-operative movement\ prosperous years it was possible to recruit new members by publicising the “divi" But the co-operatives have not kept up with the leaders in the race for trade. In 1960 their sales reached the record level of £1,066 million, but their proportion of total retail sales actually fell slightly and their average dividend payment was 11¾d. in the pound, compared with 1s. in the pound in 1953 and 1s. 9½d. in 1939.

In 1958, after two years’ investigation, a committee presided over by Mr. Hugh Gaitskell and with Mr. C. A. R. Crosland as secretary issued a long report on the methods and problems of the co-operative movement. They found that the expansion of membership and trade was slowing down.

In the period 1890 to 1920 the cooperative share in total national expenditure on goods and services more than doubled, but in the next thirty-six years it increased by only one-sixth.

Comparing the I950’s with the beginning of this century, the small private retailers lost ground heavily but the principal gainers were the multiple shops and to a smaller extent the department stores. The Committee found the relative lack of progress of the co-operatives since the war “the most disturbing feature.”

The Committee, some of whose recommendations came in for much criticism, urged big changes, including the amalgamation of retail societies to reduce the number from about 950 to 200 or 300, more efficient management, better service and better staff recruitment, and the improvement of labour relations.

But although some amalgamations are taking place and costly schemes of modernisation are being introduced, the troubles have continued for many of the retail societies:

In 1960 retail sales as a whole rose by four per cent., department store sales by as much as seven per cent.. Co-operative sales by only one per cent. Even the small shopkeeper did better. And now the cut-price super market is menacing the Co-ops’ traditional strongholds. Well may Co-operative officials shiver in their ” Sunday Footwear. 

If there is any mystery about the Co-ops' decline, a visit to the local branch may clear up part of it—though not for people who live in Leicester. Nottingham and certain other places where the Co-ops’ are notoriously efficient. ’’Dowdy, parochial and technically backward” were Mr. Crosland’s words for the Co-op. and the shelves sometimes tend to confirm them. (Daily Telegraph, 11.5.61.)

Trying to compete with private traders, some co-operatives are going in for cut prices but while this increases sales it means, as for the big Liverpool society, that there is no surplus available for the traditional dividend on purchases, for the first time in the Society's 47 years’ history.

Where they have been more successful is in the insurance field. The Co-operative Insurance Society, has just opened its new skyscraper headquarters in Manchester. The Co-operative News (27/10/62) found this noteworthy because it was opened by Prince Philip—

. . . the first occasion on which a member of the Royal Family has declared open a co-operative building.”

As employers the co-operatives have their problems too. Strikes are not unknown (including in the C.I.S.).

Before the war the pay and conditions of co-operative employees compared rather favourably with the majority of their private competitors. It is doubtful if they do so today. A few months ago the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied workers made an inquiry into staffing conditions in a number of Co-operative societies. They found that two-thirds of them were understaffed and two in every five of the Union's branches gave as the reason “that recruits could not be found because of the low wages paid by the Society when compared with pay in outside jobs.” The Socialist attitude towards the cooperative movement is that it solves no working class problem. Even if modernisation enables the co-operatives to recover lost ground in their fight against their retail rivals, they cannot achieve the social revolution which is the aim of the Socialist Movement. The dreams of Robert Owen and some of the Co-operative pioneers can be achieved only through Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Labour and Tories at home (1955)

From the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The annual conferences of the two major parties were studies in political contrast. For the Tories it was a splendid spectacle—a jamboree of quietly exulting hearts.

For Labour it was a half-hearted acceptance that “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark," a reluctant realisation that Nationalisation is no well-seasoned Socialist plank but a worm-eaten structure full of bureaucratic dry-rot over which the paint of 80 years' propaganda has worn very thin.

Now a three year policy committee is to be set up to try to substitute new planks for old. There will, of course, be much hammering and sawing by the party chippies and at the end a bag of political sawdust and shavings. 

The Conference chairman, Dr. Edith Summerskill, began the proceedings with a diagnosis of the ills of the body politic. She discovered the Tory Chancellor as the malignant cause. One felt, however, that her forceps were not so anti-septic as they might have been. The Labour Party do not like Mr. Butler, not because of his blue blooded origin, but because of the pink Fabianism he adroitly puts to the Tory cause. Now the Conservative front bench has taken to importing back room boys, Mr. Butler, with their aid, has devised vote-catching policies and captivating slogans. He appears a shrewder and more imaginative politician than his Labour counterpart Mr. Gaitskell, one of Labour's bright boys, who has taken a degree in something.

Dr. Summerskill also lamented the fact that the Labour Party has lost its emotional appeal for youth. She said they now take full employment for granted and even want something more. In short, the Labour Party are unable at present to exploit the fear of mass-unemployment. She added that Labour used to think work was synonymous with happiness. While it may be true to say that to be out of work is to be unhappy it does not necessarily mean the converse is true. Dr. Summerskill, it seems, is mildly astonished to discover that because a youth may earn his own living it does not follow that “ his cup runneth over."

Indeed, the very work which Dr. Summerskill once thought was synonymous with happiness can itself be a source of industrial frustration and as pernicious in its effects in one way as unemployment is in another. One has only to think of the large number of youth working on semi-automatic processes. The routine and drudgery often involved in junior clerkships. The thousands of boys and girls in blind-alley occupations or the soul destroying tasks of many unskilled occupations; or even the gap between what career examinations so often promise and what they actually yield. All of which is perfectly consistent with a system based on costs and profits.

To work is one thing. To earn a living is Capitalism's distorted version of it. “ To work for money,” said Marx, “ is not really to work at all.” It still remains a major indictment of Capitalism that it cannot effectively gear the creative capacities of men to the productive processes. Perhaps because many of the industrial young lack a productive outlet they seem deficient in social outlook, and seek relief from the treadmill of aimless work in the treadmill of aimless leisure.

The Tories claim, however, to attract more to their youth organisation than does the Labour Party. This may merely signify that young suburbia places a greater prestige value on a half-pint drink in the local Conservative Club than in the local boozer or Working Men’s Institute. The Labour' Party is, however, setting up a new youth organisation to compete with the Tories in catching 'em young.

Strangely enough, it was Gaitskell whom his rival Bevan once contemptuously called a dessicated calculating machine, who made the biggest emotional impact on the Labour Conference by himself emotionally announcing that “he was a true Socialist." This public avowal of faith, the first it seems he has made, earned him the biggest ovation of the Conference. It might earn him the party leadership from the discredited Bevan and the ageing Morrison.

And of what did this public avowal of true Socialist faith consist, which wrung the heart of Mr. Gaitskell and the withers of the Conference? It was that vague innocuous tenet that has done service for every political creed—“ Equality of opportunity.” Mr. Gaitskell, however, further qualified it by adding, ‘“reward should go to work and merit and not to wealth and position.” Here was the authentic voice of the Intelligentsia who believe that the division between intellectual and manual labour is an eternal dispensation. Such “equality of opportunity” would exclude any opportunity for equality.

Bevan, as usual, was “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” While the Bevan demands for bigger and better doses of Nationalisation earn support from the constituent Labour Party, it is against the political trends of the time. Moreover, words like Public Ownership, Workers’ Control and even Nationalisation, are becoming political swear words, offensive to the delicate ears of sober Labour leaders and eminently respectable T.U. chiefs.

The last-named regard Bevanism as a disease, whereas it is merely a symptom. No doubt the Labour Party strives to have differences with the Tories but its net effect is to produce differences within itself which militate against it being an effective political whole. Thus the price of some permanent difference with the Tories would be the price of a permanent split; clearly an impossible situation. Yet for the Labour Party to be free of splits would be tantamount to declaring itself politically redundant. That is its perpetual dilemma. Because the Labour Party is part of an established two party system in a monolithic political structure its internal weaknesses are a matter of concern for Labour and Tory alike. The Labour Conference gave no sign that they would be remedied.

Tory Conferences are never complicated by attempts at policy making. Every delegate is deeply aware of his political station in life to which it has pleased the Conservative Central Office to call him. Only the Leader makes policy. To question it would be sacrilege. The Leader in his wisdom does of course delegate power to eminent colleagues and consult High Finance and Big Business.

Following the Churchillian precedent, Mr. Eden was not present at Conference proceedings. On the last day, however, he turned up and made a moving speech. Leaders on such occasions always make moving speeches. The Conference usually opens with a prayer, then the annual platform pep talk from the Conservative Elders, followed by well prepared speeches from the Conservative young and closes with a moist-eyed, deep-throated rendering of “Land of Hope and Glory.”

Nevertheless, the modern Tory Party, unlike their rivals, present a suave facade of party unity. There may be dissensions but they are conducted in well-bred, modulated voices. Deep down there may be fierce jealousies and rivalries but they scarcely ruffle the silken surface. Even when Churchill, old, arrogant and overbearing, became an embarrassment to the Tories there was no strident “Churchill must go” campaign. People who pricked their ears caught faint murmurings but no one heard distinctly, for the Tory door was shut and the windows closed. Just as when Butler, who blotted his copy book at Munich, lost out to Churchill’s white headed boy, Eden, for the premiership, no one yelled—“we wuz robbed.” While the Tories divide they never split.

After the crushing defeat of the Tories in 1945 many said “ they were sunk.” The same view was held in their 1906 debacle. But the Tories have a strong survival instinct. Quietly, efficiently, they salvaged the craft, gave it a coat of new paint and refloated it. Also they were able to cash in on their opponents’ mistakes and the disappointment Labour’s terms of office brought. The tide turned. People, who in 1945, voted against old Toryism began to vote for “New Look” Conservatism. In 1945 the Tories’ greatest liability was their pre-war domestic policy. In 1955 the Labour Party’s greatest liability is their post-war record.

The Tories are supposed to be traditionally stupid, a myth probably self-perpetrated to their own advantage. Actually they are shrewd and flexible politicians. “Dishing the Whigs” is as adroitly practised by them as it was by Disraeli. Because they are the traditional representatives of wealth and property, they regard themselves as the rightful rulers of the realm. The difference between them and the Labour Party is that Labour believes it can govern. The Tories know they can.

As for the Welfare State it is much more Tory “Socialism” than Labour “Socialism”. Long ago Industrial Feudalism was a Tory ideal, where workers would have “rights ” as well as duties. Indeed the New Welfare State is only old Tory reformism writ larger. While it may have features not wholly satisfactory to the Tories it is the current expression of their age-long political paternalism. While circumstances may make them modify it here and there they will keep its main structure unimpaired.

At present they seem to have a decided political edge on their rivals. Only the possibility of a slump, it appears, can boom Labour’s falling stock.

Ted Wilmott

Passing Comments: Unsolicited Testimonial to Mr. Gaitskell (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unsolicited Testimonial to Mr. Gaitskell

When 1 was reading in a public library, a lady next to me reading the Daily Telegraph approved so much of what she read that she had to unburden herself immediately; and 1 was the nearest person. I haven’t checked on all her facts, but the substance of what she said was this:

“Thank goodness someone’s talking sense at last—Mr. Gaitskell is saying they ought to give the workers bonus shares if the work is going well. Now that’s what I’ve always said—I had some shares in the South Metropolitan Gas Co. during the war and they used to give the workers bonus shares and it always kept them satisfied—they never had a strike all during the war! That’s just what I’ve always said—keep the workers contented and you won’t get any trouble. And I see Mr. Gaitskell has been saying we shouldn’t have any more taxation on the important people—the people with capital and the people who provide work. Because if you tax them they’re not going to stay in this country are they? And if they go how should we get on?—because they provide all the work.”

I feel sure that Mr. Gaitskell will be glad to know that, although he may not be very popular with the trade unions, his proposals have drawn forth the admiration of at least one shareholder.

* * *

State Capitalism

As the nationalised industries continue to publish each year their reports, showing how much interest has been paid to people who are called (for some reason unknown) “ex”-shareholders, it should become obvious to the most fervent nationalises that whatever nationalisation is or is not. it is not Socialism, and that the workers in nationalised industries cannot be said, by any stretch of the imagination, to be either the owners or the controllers of their industries. These facts, which the Socialist Party has been trying to propagate for the last half-century, have at fast reached the edges of that bastion of ignorance, the Labour Party. Among the first to make a public recantation is a Labour M.P., Fred Longden, who has just published a book of essays.

* * *

Lucrative Stockholding

In it he says that nationalisation “does not disturb the present social order.” It “does not dislocate the pyramid-like build of society. Its horizontal classes and perpendicular grades and castes remain intact with greater security than ever. Stockholding is sounder and more lucrative. Management rests in the hands of a Board that is more distant from the worker and consumer than ever. This is ’democracy’ with a very remote control. It is not Socialism.” (“The Proletarian Heritage,” quoted in Reynolds News, 12.8.51.)

With your last sentence, Mr. Longden, we couldn’t agree more. But what a pity it is that you have spent your political life in the Labour movement working to bring about that state of affairs you now so justly criticise. Still, we don’t want to harp too much on your past misdeeds. If you really want to bring about a Socialist society, you can still join with all the other people who want to do so. Apply at your nearest branch of the Socialist Party.

* * *

Never Say Die

Mr. Longden has at least been honest enough to admit that he was wrong, now that it is clear beyond any possibility of doubt that nationalisation is not Socialism. But there are others who are incorrigible —chief among them being the Stalinists. With them the evidence counts for nothing. Theoretical argument, practical demonstration, both leave them cold. Ignoring the experience of the coalminers, the gasworkers, the railwaymen, the Daily Worker continues to cheer on nationalisation projects wherever they appear. In Persia, a nationalisation demonstration evoked the approving comment, “Smallest hint of government weakness in face of imperialist pressure brings the crowds out to show the people’s determination to force oil nationalisation through” (11.7.51). And when the secretary of the “Northern Rhodesian African Congress” demands the nationalisation of the Northern Rhodesian copper mines, the Daily Worker headlines it “Africans want copper mines” (23.7.51). The Africans may want the copper mines. But if they do, they’re certainly going a queer way about it.

* * *

It’s What Yon Wanted

Even when trade unionists see that nationalisation has left them exactly where they were before, any attacks they make on the new state-directors, any claims they bring forward for higher pay, are greeted with a reproachful “well, you wanted nationalisation yourself.” The head of the British Electricity Authority, Lord Citrine, went along to the annual conference of the Amalgamated Engineering Union recently, berated those delegates who had attacked the B.E.A. administration, and ended up by appealing to “the trade unions, which were really responsible for bringing about nationalisation, to ‘give us a little help occasionally, and perhaps a little more charity when public utterances are made’.” (Daily Herald, 22.6.51.) And the trade unions cannot deny the charge that they helped to bring about nationalisation.

* * *

Labour “ Socialism ” in Action

From the Daily Herald (2.8.51): “The fall in share values, following Mr. Gaitskell's announcement a week ago that dividends are to be limited, is only one-third of their rise during the past three and a half months. With that statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer torpedoed a half-hearted Tory attack in the Commons yesterday.” But what an interesting commentary it makes on Mr. Gaitskell’s claim to be a Socialist when he publicly boasts that he isn’t half as hard on the shareholders, on those who live on the labour of others, as his opponents make out. In fact the Stock Exchange, despite the loud cries of anguish which were heard in Lombard Street when the slight dividend restriction was first announced, soon came to see what a mild measure it was. Even the small drop in share values which actually took place was not long-lived. Two and a half weeks after the original announcement the Sunday Express (12.8.51) said: “All but one-tenth of the losses has been regained. And from the way things are going it won’t be long before the remaining tenth is made good.”

Which, in practice, amounts to another vote of confidence by the shareholders in the Labour Government.

* * *

Discovery

Another of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s remarks during the Commons debate on August 1st was this: “Figures of the distribution of property do not bear out any suggestion that ordinary shares are held in large quantities by the poorer section of the community.”

This must rank as the understatement of the month.

* * *

How to Fight Wars—1

From the Daily Graphic (24.7.51): “At Verdun in 1916 Petain flung back the German hordes with a scornful 'Ils ne passeront pas ’ (they shall not pass). Nor did they, although half a million men died round the shell-torn forts in five months.” Half a million men died, but not Petain, who became a General largely on the strength of that battle. (And if it was Petain who “flung back the German hordes,” what were all these other Frenchmen doing there?) Petain survived the men under his command for thirty-five years, dying at the age of ninety-five.

* * *

How to Fight Wars—2

General Kurt Student, formerly supreme commander of Hitler’s airborne troops, wrote an article in the Sunday Express last May 27th. He said: “ For me, as commander of the German airborne troops, the Battle of Crete in 1941 carries bitter memories. I miscalculated when I suggested this attack, which resulted in the loss of so many valuable parachutists that it meant the end of the German airborne landing forces, which I had created.” Many parachutists were lost. But modern war has its compensations. General Student is still with us. And ten years after his miscalculations at Crete, the General is still fit enough to write articles for the papers.

Alwyn Edgar

Socialist Victory or Election Antics (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Judging from recent press reports, it would appear that a number of Labour Party M.P.’s are not at all sure that the Conservative Party’s inability to solve the problems which are making capitalism unpalatable to an increasing number of workers will result in the return to power, at the next General Election, of the Labour Party.

The fact that it is the system of society which needs changing, and not the people that administer it has not yet been understood by the majority of the working class. It is because of this ignorance of their class needs, that workers have been persuaded at election time to cast their vote for whichever programme of reforms seems to offer the greatest measure of security against the constant threat of unemployment, war, attacks upon wage levels, and the host of other afflictions that are the burden of the property-less in a class-divided society.

It is apparently because of the pronounced lack of enthusiasm shown by voters during recent bye-elections for the vote-catching schemes which the Labour Party have put forward, that has given rise to another splinter-group within the Labour Party. The sponsors of this new group claim that they will be able to combat the apathy shown by the electorate, and will be able to help mould public opinion into accepting the Labour Party as the next government

Mr. Stephen Swingler, M.P., chairman of the group, in an attempt to convince the party leaders—“that the movement is within the four walls of party rules ” (Daily Telegraph), quotes the application form for membership of the group as demonstrating their loyalty to the party. He points out that only Labour Party members who are anxious to work for the success of the Party, are eligible for membership.

Mr. Swingler sets out the group's aim as being “to recruit individual members pledging themselves to work for Socialism on a national basis.” This must be somewhat confusing to those people who have been kidded by the misrepresentation of the daily newspapers that the whole Labour Party was Socialist, for it now appears that only a select band, working both “for the success of the party” and for "Socialism on a national basis ” (which appears to be something quite different) are, according to Mr. Swingler, Socialists.

This trick of going in two different directions at the same time has also been used by Mr. Lamb, the Labour candidate in the Torrington By-election. Mr. Lamb is reported as having said: “I believe we should stop immediately everything connected with the manufacture and testing of H-bombs. Britain must not be a base for the launching of guided missiles. As I do not consider the H-bomb a deterrent 1 cannot consider the manufacture and testing of them a peaceful activity.” He then went on to say: “I have expressed a personal view, a line which I shall pursue throughout the election. I shall be unrelenting in my opinion.” He did, however, modify this statement considerably by adding: “If subsequently my method is not acceptable to the majority (of the Labour Party), I must be prepared to and indeed will, accept the majority decision ” (Daily Express).

Mr. Gaitskell, as reported in the Daily Telegraph, warned these misguided enthusiasts of the dangerous effects of setting up organisations within the Labour Party. Addressing a constituency party dinner gathering at Keighley, Mr. Gaitskell said: “Recently an impression has been created that disunity may be reappearing. 1 want to warn the party of the dangers of this. We have at present, every hope of winning a substantial victory at the next general election. But this could be seriously jeopardised if division and disputes in our ranks broke out again.” He then went on to say: “If one organisation of this kind is permitted, there is no reason why it should not be followed by others, advancing other points of view. The result would inevitably be the distraction and disruption of the Party, with disastrous effects alike on our electoral efficiency and our reputation as the alternative government.”

“Victory for Socialism” is the title adopted by Swingler and Co., to cover their activities which they claim will help the Labour Party to return to power at the next general election. One of the first moves of this group, in their attempt to cash in on popular movements, was to ally itself to the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament” which organised the Easter march on the British nuclear weapons' headquarters at Aldermaston.

The object of this campaign is to gain publicity for the movement's protest against the manufacture of nuclear weapons and rocket missiles in this country. It must be pointed out that these activities, whatever else they may accomplish, have nothing at all to do with a victory for Socialism.

The fact is that these architects of “Socialist Victory” stress that they are always prepared to toe the Labour Party line, which does not say much for their sincerity in opposing nuclear armaments. Or have they forgotten that it was the Labour Party who pioneered the manufacture of the atom bomb in this country and made the manufacture of the H-bomb possible?

What these political opportunists fail to realise is that capitalism, with or without the H-bomb to protect the interests of the propertied class, with or without a Labour Party dedicated to nationalising the exploitation of the workers, cannot function without the poverty of the wage packet; the pursuit of profit; the wars that arise because of the need of rival capitalist groups to protect or capture markets, sources of raw materials and trade routes; and the periodical trade slumps which result in workers becoming unemployed as a consequence of their producing more than the market can absorb.

But one cannot expect Mr. Swingler and his associates to face these tiresome facts. And so the political merry-go-round goes on, with the charlatans and misguided do-gooders performing mental acrobatics in order to gain the votes of working people. And for what purpose? The purpose of gaining governmental power in order to administer capitalism with all the problems that it produces. One can only hope that sooner or later workers will get wise to this kind of double-talk, and decide to run society themselves, and run it for their own benefit. When this happens, the need for wars. H-bombs, poverty, slumps and leaders of the calibre of Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Swingler will finally disappear.

Eric Coffey