"The Future Labour Offers You" (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old Rags in Glorious Technicolour

Before the First World War political issues were by and large a matter of—on my right—Tory, Protection—on my left—Liberal, Free Trade, and the voters backed their fancy. Then the Labour Party only took part in minor, left contests with the Liberals sometimes in their corner.

But even while Laissez Faire was still the official policy, the system’s bureaucratic and administrative superstructure grew up like Jack and the Beanstalk and political parties found themselves caught up in the fine web of a more complex economy, from which they could never hope to free themselves. All had to do the same things. The job was to persuade the electorate that it was one rather than the other of them who could do these same things, better—or differently.

Today the political maps, whether read from left to right or vice versa, present a vast labyrinth of bureaucratic and administrative detail. Small wonder that when the electorate are taken on conducted tours by rival politicians they are apt to get lost in the maze: as a result the electorate often do not know where the politicians are and the politicians are often at a loss to know the whereabouts of the electorate. This loss of effective contact between the political parties and the electorate has become for the former a major problem. The task has been to establish a more simplified routing system.

The Tories first started this by putting up sign posts all over the place by way of captions and slogans. As a result more people began to find their way to the Tory polling booths than to the Labour ones in two successive elections.

The Politicians take to Advertising

Again, after the first impetus of enthusiasm for Labour had worn off, Tories resorted to the old and more simple device of making elections largely an issue of Conservative blue powders versus Labour pink pills. As in all forms of monopolistic competition they relied upon superior advertising techniques to increase their public sales as against their rivals.

This has caused the Labour Party to let its hair down and pull up its publicity socks. They have just issued a pepped up version of their policy document called. “The Future Labour Offers You.” It is slick and shiny, and all captions, pictures and fluorescent printing. If against their Tory rivals they can no longer be holier-than-thou, they can at least strive to be glossier than thou.

It looks like a Christmas mail order brochure, complete with thumb index, so one can conveniently flick to what immediately interests you. Inside it will tell you all about your job, your home, your health, and your children’s education. In fact, its legislative proposals cover everything from conception to cemetery.

In the main it seeks to win over various categories of “middle class” voters, ranging from “Spam and Wonder Loaf” to “ House and Garden.” It is all cheerful and cosy and has a picture of a rosy dawn, but not a red one. It is the nearest yet to Shaw's ideal of making Labour as acceptable to all shades of opinion, including capitalists, as Tories or Liberals. It looks appetising election fare, only the taste in the mouth is nasty.

Nationalisation almost forgotten

There is only a brief reference to nationalisation in the document and even then it contrives to say as little as possible about it. While as a policy nationalisation has not yet been relegated to the museum of antiquities it has certainly gone in the Labour lumber room and the dust sheets are drawn over it.

For fifty years Labour chanted the virtues of nationalised industry, as against wicked private enterprise —the mines were their favourite theme. Now economic reality has converted it from a day dream to a nightmare. The coal industry is in the red, uneconomic pits are being closed down and miners are in process of being sacked by the thousands. Then there is the plight of the Railways and the plight of Railwaymen facing the biggest of large scale dismissals in Railway history. While the position of other nationalised transport is shaky, nor are Gas and Electricity illuminating examples of prosperous, booming nationalisation.

So nationalisation, which for fifty years was Labour's main policy plank, is found to be full of woodworm and the rot has set in .

Two conferences ago the Labour Party said: “Its housing policy would be the biggest public ownership project ever undertaken in this country.” Now in the document all we meet is the vague phrase: “We shall tackle the problem of tenants' houses by empowering local councils to buy rent restricted property and modernising it as fast as possible.”

Two years ago their emphatic policy was municipalisation of houses. But municipalisation is a word derived from the root of nationalisation which is now among the best Labour circles a swear word, so perhaps the former word ought not to be used in nice “middle class” homes.

Like the Tories, they propose to give mortgage grants via local councils and like the Tories they are prepared to give grants to prop up houses that are falling down. Both the Labour and Tory Housing Plan come within the category of identical twins.

Labourites used to talk of relieving the insecurity and tensions generated by the system. Yet after the successive Labour governments they blandly tell us that nearly half the hospital beds are occupied by people who are mentally ill. Perhaps there is a melancholy satisfaction in the fact that in a social system which more and more comes to resemble a vast lunatic asylum, the percentage of mental illness is not much greater.

One wonders whether Labour leaders along with other political leaders ought to be classified among the mentally sick. If so, it is disquieting to think that instead of being put to bed they may be put in office.

Disarmament hypocrisy

With tongue-bulging cheeks the party that began the biggest peace-time armament drive in English History talks with a nauseating non-conformist morality about the need for disarmament and uses the old smear device of suggesting that it is the Tories who are the real militarist party.

Having approved the atom bomb and initiated at home the making of the hydrogen bomb, they seek to make political capital by their proposal to suspend nuclear tests. It is the sort of morality which would give a man under a suspended death sentence an anti-virus injection to keep him in good health and spirits.

No mention is made of Labour's ambitious schemes, bruited two conferences ago, of buying shares and participating in private enterprise if returned to office and so becoming direct eaters of surplus value. No doubt the marginal voter must be carefully weaned from Tory skim milk to Labour's predigested propaganda pap.

Perhaps the worst section is the one which deals with the Labour proposal to increase the old age pension from 50s. to 60s. per week. Mr. Crossman once said it was inhuman to expect old people to live on 50s. per week. Does he and his party think it human to live on 60s. per week? What an inhuman concept of human needs.

Only a cursory treatment can be made of this document now, and a detailed examination must be the subject of further articles, but enough has been said to show the yawning chasm of their once proclaimed ideals and the political practices they now accept.

Labourism not Socialism

To the old Labour appeal to us, that after all, we were both on the same road, the answer is, yes, but how far we have travelled in an opposite direction since then.

It has been said that when the final draft of this revamped version of Labour policy was run over, leading Labourites were so pleased and excited by it that they forgot to notice the word Socialism had been omitted from it. Perhaps after calling themselves a Socialist Party for fifty years they had guilt feelings and decided to put it in. Perhaps Mr. Bevan demanded it to go in as a concession to his “revolutionary” tradition. So they sprinkled it like pepper, a half-dozen times on the last page and half.

Because Labour’s view of Socialism is more than ever a version of Capitalism with knobs on, the word may now take pride of place in Labour’s vocabulary as against nationalisation, which has become a taboo word. Henceforth the Labour Party might become the party of “Socialism” and not nationalisation. No doubt many shades of opinion, including Shaw's “Capitalists,” would welcome the change.

Even in the full draft policy Keir Hardie is given no mention. One wonders what the founder of the Labour Party would have thought of “his party” being sold on the political market like a soap powder.

More than ever does the struggle between the major parties take on the semblance of rival detergent monopolies on the claims that both “wash whitest” and to which the Labour policy document seeks to add, that Labour adds “brightness to whiteness,” surely to continue the metaphor this is the lowest ebb “Tide” politics has reached.

To paraphrase another detergent caption, for the working class only the cleansing Socialist policy can wash the dirt out of politics which the others can’t.

Ted Wilmott

The Future of the Sudan (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commentary on the recent coup d'état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars' worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.

Robert Barltrop

Flags of Convenience and the Boycott (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Transport Workers’ Federation four-day boycott of “Panlibhonco” shipping began on 1st December. The West German Unions, although they originally voted for the ban, did not in fact support it, following upon a Court award of £30,000,000 damages in a strike case just settled. The Italian Unions refused to take part, and the boycott was ineffective in France where the great majority of the dockers belong to a Communist-dominated union not affiliated to the I.T.F. In Holland, where two-thirds of the dockers are non-union members, the situation was confused. An Amsterdam Court granted port employers an injunction to restrain the unions from joining the boycott. In Rotterdam, however, the Court refused to grant an injunction and the boycott was observed. Japanese supported the boycott in principle, but did not take active measures.

But union members in Britain, the East and Gulf Coasts of U.S., Australia, Belgium and Scandinavia, and in several other countries throughout the world, and the International Petroleum Workers’ Federation, supported the boycott, and by the last day 192 ships were idle. 

What is it all about ?

Many people have become bemused and bewildered and consequently not particularly bothered, because, in spite of the volume of discussion on flags of convenience in the newspapers until the recent boycott, the concern has been regaining the advantages or otherwise from the ship owners' point of view. The recent action by the unions has come as a surprise element of the situation.

Panamanian registration of ships was first invoked in the days of American prohibition to enable liquor to be sold to passengers aboard liners. It was not long before other advantages became known in other countries. Registration was a simple and inexpensive procedure for foreigners; there was no taxation of profits, and owners were not subject to a variety of rules and regulations such as those which had accumulated in maritime countries over the centuries. Some of these were advances won at the cost of great sacrifices by the seamen in the class-struggle with the owners for better conditions and pay. Post-war currency restrictions in the non-Panlibhonco countries have been an additional factor. Above all, American shipowners, by registering ships in Panama, were able to avoid the obligation to ship American crews at (by European standards) much higher wages.

The man who bought the Bank at Monte Carlo

Some of the “Flag of Convenience” owners are public characters and are frequently in the news. Mr. Onassis, owner or controller of a fleet worth an estimated US$300 million, is one of them. According to Time (19th January, 1953) Onassis lunched with Prince Rainier several times and bought him a 137 ft. diesel yacht. The directors of the Casino were kept out of the Palace gates by royal carabinierii and they resigned to make room for Onassis’ representatives. The Casino had been losing money and the Prince was looking for new capital amounting to US$1,000,000. Onassis planned to register ships in Monaco after moving his offices into the Casino building.

Pictures from Ships

His brother-in-law, Mr. Niarchos, also a millionaire shipowner, is another character sometimes in the news. A fairly recent Tate Gallery exhibition of Mr. Niarchos’ pictures gave pleasure to a vast public. He has bought originals of Renoir girls. Degas dancers, Gauguin Tahitans and Van Gogh landscapes at prices which run into tens of thousands. Toulouse-Lautrec’s Aristide Bruant cost him £22,000; Renoir’s Mosque at Algiers, £24,000; Van Gogh’s small Thistles £16,000.

But manoeuvring with “Flags of Convenience” is not Mr. Niarchos’ only occupation—buying pictures such as these is another, for those with American incomes can spend 30 per cent. of their income, tax free, on works of art. provided they are destined for a museum. And during his lifetime he can enjoy them in his own home. Obviously it is more attractive to spend £50,000 on a picture like Renoir’s Girl in a Plumed Hat than to hand the money over to the Inland Revenue. The museum get the pictures when he dies, but he could not take them with him, anyway.

Patriotism—for workers only

For the workers, patriotism is held up as one of the greatest of the virtues, and countless war memorials throughout the world pay tribute to the effectiveness of this teaching. Surely it must be for the workers that the poem, “ My country, ’tis of thee . . . Land where my fathers died . . .” is applicable, for millions of workers have been maimed or killed following the dictates of their ruling-classes. This recalls the story of the monkey who used the cat’s paw to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. But in the case of the Panlibhonco shipowners it seems to be a case of rather “Don’t do as I do, but do as 1 tell you”, for these characters seem intent on finding out ways of not paying taxes to not merely their native country, but to any government at all. How misled are such workers who risk life and limb fighting to protect, or extend the property of their employers, when they themselves own nothing worth fighting for.

The I.T.F. and the Boycott

A statement from the International Transport Workers’ Federation says that the boycott has two main objectives: —

“ Firstly, to draw the attention of governments to the problem and to protest against their inactivity on it. 

“ Secondly, to secure properly-regulated wages and working conditions on all ships flying flags of convenience. We would agree that conditions on board many such ships not under trade union agreements are no worse than on most European-operated ships, and in some cases are even better. But this this largely due to the campaign which the l.T.F. has carried on during the past ten years. There is. in any case, no guarantee that these standards will be maintained, because the crews have no trade union protection at present. Nor do they enjoy the security of employment or the benefits of social legislation which are generally to be found in the traditional maritime countries. What we are trying to do is in fact a straightforward trade union job, the kind of job which unions in all civilized countries have accepted as part of their normal function.”

The Statement later on says:—

" A further very vital aspect of this situation is the question of national defence in time of international emergency. How, for example, can any country claim to exercise effective control over ships which fly the flag of another nation? This is, in fact, a complete negation of the concept of national maritime sovereignty. In any case, as past emergencies have shown only too clearly, the real factor in exercising control over vessels is not their ownership or country of registration, but their crew. Here we would stress that Panlibhonco ships have become a haven for politically undesirable seafarers and others; consequently there can be no guarantee as to how such crews would act in an emergency situation. 

“ The l.T.F. has never adopted such a narrow-minded attitude and has no intention of doing so now. Our campaign is not based solely on the interests of the seafarers, but on those of the community at large—which arc equally threatened.”

Apparently these workers are more patriotic than the shipowners themselves.

Greek shipowners have accused British, Scandinavian and Dutch shipping interests of having inspired the boycott and the Greek Shipowners’ Union, acting on behalf of their co-operation committee of London threatened to lay up ships throwing their crews out of work. About 10 million tons of Greek shipping sails under the flags of Liberia, Panama and Honduras. Almost all the crews on them are Greek.

The owners’ declaration said: —

“ ' It would be obvious to all by now that this boycott . . . is simply one more manifestation of the hostility of certain shipping interests towards their competitors.' Greek shipowners, the declaration went on, already had to face the bitter campaign by owners in the so-called traditional maritime nations, who were frustrated over bureaucratic restrictions and heavy operating costs in their own countries. The l.T.W.F. was inspired by British interests trying to blackmail flags of convenience to give advantage to British and Norwegian shipping which was not threatened by eventual repetition of the boycott.” (Times, 2nd December, 1958.)

The Daily Mail (5th December, 1958) published a feature article written by Mr. Niarchos, who on behalf of the Niarchos Group refuted in detail the charges of the I.T.F. After dealing with working conditions aboard his ships he said this:—

” If international federations of unions are to become concerned in matters of international business and relations between nations, they are assuming a new empire-building role far removed from their original mission of furthering the true interests of their dues-paying members . . . and the handling of genuine union problems will be completely obscured.”

Trade Union action

Trade union action to maintain or improve workers’ living standards commends itself to any Socialist, and particularly when it is international action, for this implies a greater degree of working-class solidarity, and it is this factor which is so encouraging about the boycott. The Capitalist press expressed satisfaction that the boycott was only partial, but it must also be remembered that much of the support which the various workers gave was not to advance their own sectional interests, but that of the seamen generally. The Financial Times in its editorial (2nd December, 1958) said of the boycott:— «

“ It is also international and this use of the international strike weapon could be a precedent for much more undesirable exertions of trade union power.”

We couldn’t agree more, but, of course, although a boycott may or may not serve one section of the Capitalist class, working-class solidarity is liable to be undesirable for the Capitalist class generally.

Frank Offord

Party News Briefs (1959)

Party News from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many branches are continuing to hold discussions after Branch business, and this is proving most successful. Bloomsbury, Camberwell, Chelsea, Islington, Lewisham, Paddington, are a few of the Brancnes which regularly hold discussions. The Swansea and Mitcham Groups also have interesting discussions. This activity is attracting sympathisers to branch meetings, and the informal atmosphere is appreciated by visitors and Party members alike. The next discussion at Bloomsbury Branch is on January 1st, the subject being “Are the Capitalists Cynical? ” Comrade Kilner will open. The following discussion will be on February 4th at 8.30 p.m., Conway Hall, North Room.

* * *

The Socialist Party of Ireland is holding at least two meetings in mid-January, and arrangements are in hand for a speaker from London to visit them to address one of these meetings. Our Comrades in Ireland are few in number, but they carry on a great amount of propaganda and with these meetings in January they hope to create greater interest in the Party case. This they should do if hard work is justly rewarded.

* * *

Paddington Branch is making sure that their meeting at Denison House on Sunday, March 15th, is going to be successful. There is a preliminary reminder elsewhere in this issue and the branch members are anxious that Comrades advertise the meeting well. More details will be given in the February and March “Standards,” but meanwhile this note will enable members to book the date. 

* * *

Have you obtained any new subscribers for the Socialist Standard for 1959? There is still time, and a subscription form is in this issue.

Phyllis Howard

War of Nerves in Canada (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the latter part of November much concern was expressed in official and other quarters over the strike of railway shop workers that was to have started on December 1st. No concern at all was expressed over the fact that the workers had been led around by the nose for a year prior to their decision to strike.

The railway unions had expressed their willingness to settle on the terms of a government conciliation board award which provided something less than half the amount originally demanded. In announcing the strike decision, F. H. Hall, chairman of the unions’ negotiating committee said: “The pattern of recent years has been a gradual falling behind industrial wages generally, and even the recommended increase will not halt this deterioration.”

In spite of this, a war of nerves was carried on against the workers. Politicians shook their heads at the potentially sad consequences to the nation, press editorials spoke learnedly about the dangers of inflation, preachers expressed the hope that moderation would triumph, business men talked about being priced out of to protect their living standard are not to be treated lightly

Meanwhile, the government organised a gathering of provincial government representatives and held “hearings” on the advisability of allowing the freight rate increase which the railway companies insisted they must have to meet the demands of the workers. These hearings could have gone on for months, but they were hurried along by the strike deadline, much to the undoubted irritation of the participants. A few days before the strike was to have started the railways were awarded their freight increase and came to terms with the workers.

In prolonging the dispute beyond the expressed willingness of the workers to accept the small change awarded by the conciliation board, the Government no doubt, had an eye to the future. That it hoped for a settlement more favourable to the employers is doubtful, for the unions had repeatedly slated they would not accept less. But another day is coming and the Government no doubt hopes that workers whose nerves are frayed by long months of “negotiations” and offensive propaganda will be less ready to put forward a determined position when the present contract expires. May the actual response be quite different!

In the midst of the railway “crisis” the C.C.F.. in the person of Harold Winch C.C.F.. M.P., from Vancouver. demanded that Prime Minister Diefenbaker be brought back to Canada to take personal charge. The prime minister was on a world tour.

This piece of grandstanding might have provided some comic relief, except for the unpleasant fact that antics of this kind tend to further the attitude that ruling class representatives can approach a conflict between workers and masters from an impartial and altruistic position. Mr. Winch is supposed to be one of the better informed members of the C.C.F. and ought to know this.

However, viewed from the standpoint of the uninformed and impressionable worker. Mr. Winch’s contribution might have been impressive, except for the fact that his own leader, Mr. Coldwell. was also galivanting in the far places.

Jim Milne

"A Property-Owning Democracy" (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

But when P.E.P. published a report on this problem in 1952, the authors expressed the view that more than two-thirds of the population could not afford to buy their own houses on even the most generous terms. (Sunday Times, November 2nd, 1958.)

Tuppence Coloured (1959)

A Short Story from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

“ I dunno,” said Mr. Smith, “ every tea time we get bloody rock and roll.”

“ You was young once, dad,” said his sixteen-year-old son, Bill, putting on another record.

“ I was never that young,” snapped Mr. Smith, “ and there’s Mary gawping out of the window as usual. If she spent as much time on her homework as she does that, she might have a chance in the scholarship.”

“Oh, alright, dad,” began Mary; then she broke off, "My! there’s Maggie coming up the steps with one of those dark blokes. Gosh! he looks a real smasher.” “ What, another one! ” said Bill with a grin. "Maggie certainly likes her men colourful.

“Shut up,” said his father. “Listen, Daisy”; he addressed his wife almost accusingly, “This has got to stop. It was only last year, she wasn’t seventeen then, and she got in with that darkie who she used to bring to the door. Then there was that Jamaican she met at the firm’s dance, to say nothing about that West Indian she brought home one Saturday night. It’s a bit thick, you know, and it’s about time we put our foot down.” 

“Well, I don’t suppose she’s going to ask this one up,” said Mrs. Smith mildly.

“ She’d better not,” said Mr. Smith, darkly. “ I’ve nothing against coloured people, but black and white don’t mix, it’s not natural. Besides, if they must leave their own country they can at least keep themselves to themselves when they’re in someone else’s country. The way some of ’em make up to our girls makes me sick.” 

“ Worse than the Yanks, dad? ” asked Bill.

“ Besides,”’ said Mr. Smith ignoring the remark, “ 1 don’t want all the neighbours gossiping. What with Fred Price living in the same house and working at my place, it will be all over the firm. I bet Mrs. Price is looking out of the window.”

At that moment there was two sharp knocks on the street door.

“ Bell’s out of order again.” said Bill, “ I bet Maggie’s worn her finger down, pressing it. Shall I go and open the door? ”

“ No, I’ll answer it,” said Mr Smith.

“ Don’t make a scene, dad,” said Mrs. Smith, but Mr. Smith was already out of the room.

Mr. Smith opened the door, and in the porch with Maggie stood a coloured young man about 25 years of age, dressed in a suit that might have cost anything from £50, upwards.

Then, as Mr. Smith looked, into his line of vision, just beyond his 1938 Austin seven, stood a big 1958 Jaguar.

Mr. Smith felt a little warm and embarrassed.

The young man spoke in a well modulated voice. “I have come back with your daughter, perhaps I ought to explain.” he hesitated for a moment.

Mr. Smith rushed in. “ Don’t explain on the doorstep, come in, we’ve just made a cup of tea.

“ Very well,” said the young man. still a little hesitant. “ I will just lock my car.”

“ What! Got rid of him already.” said his son, as Mr. Smith bounded into the room. “That was quick work.”

“ Get a cup and saucer from the best set.” said Mr. Smith to his wife. “Christ, look at this place, always looks like a pigsty.”

“ But I thought ’’—began the astonished Mrs. Smith.

“ This bloke’s different.” interrupted Mr. Smith, “ you wait till you see him. Actually he’s not really dark, but sort of, off white, like a lot of high class Indians are.”

At that moment there came a tap on the door. Mr. Smith ushered the dark young man in. The family stared. Nobody noticed Maggie as she came slowly into the room and sat down.

Mrs. Smith handed the young man a cup of lea. Mr. Smith offered him a slice of his wife’s home-made cake, which he graciously declined.

“ Mr. Ram Singh,” said Maggie a little awkwardly.

“ Not the racehorse owner’s son? ” said Mr. Smith in somewhat awed tones.

“ I am afraid so,” smiled the dark young man.

“One of his horses is running in the big race tomorrow.” said Mr. Smith, rather proud of his racing lore.

“ Yes,” said the young man. “ and if I may offer a tip off the record, my father thinks it will win."

“ My! ” said Mary, from the window, quite unabashed. “ Never knew Maggie had such posh friends.”

“ I haven’t,” said Maggie. “ 1 have never spoken to Mr. Singh in my life before today, although he has a suite of offices in our block of offices. You see, I was crossing the road and 1 slipped and gave my ankle a bit of twist. Good luck, Mr. Singh swerved or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. 1 was going to tell dad downstairs, but he rushed off before 1 had a chance. So,” concluded Mary, “Mr. Singh kindly brought me home.”

“ Oh.” said Mr. Smith.

Mr. Singh handed round some Turkish cigarettes and after a few general remarks he finished his cup of tea and courteously made his departure.

“Who’d have thought of having the son of Jam. Ram Singh up for a cup of tea," said Mr. Smith to the office staff, next morning. “ You could have knocked me down with a feather, and don’t forget to back his old man’s horse. You know, I believe he’d taken a bit of fancy to Maggie. Must say, he had no side, quite the gentleman, treated us like equals.”

Ted Wilmott

50 Years Ago: The Concentration of Capital (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

“For while on the one hand the concentration of the separate Capitalist concerns into fewer hands is proceeding, on the other hand with the development in the division of labour the mutual dependence of the seemingly independent undertakings is growing. . . . This mutual dependence, however, becomes continually more a one-sided dependence of the small Capitalists upon the larger ones. . . . Many Capitalists having the appearance of independence, yet subservient to others, and many Capitalist concerns that appear to be independent, are in reality merely branches of one huge Capitalist undertaking."

[From the Socialist Standard, January 1909.]

Inside Russia Today (1959)

Book Review from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Inside Russia Today by John Gunther (Hamish Hamilton, 21s.)

The author of this book (published by Hamish Hamilton, 21s.) is too well known to need introduction, and his list of books giving inside information, such as Inside Europe, Inside Asia, Inside U.S.A., have had wide circulation. We in the Socialist Party are, of course, especially interested in Russia because of the many claims that the system of political economy is that of Socialism. We deny it and say that Russia is not Socialist, never was Socialist, will not become a Socialist land until the mass of the people understand and want Socialism. But let us look at Gunther’s book and see what he finds in Russia.

On page 30 Gunther writes: “Several times in this book I shall seemingly contradict on one page what I have said on another. Anyway 'How much Socialism remains, if any?' ” He poses the question, but does not answer it. He tells us on page 25, “ The U.S.S.R. . . .  contains 15 different republics, and is the world’s first Socialist State.” So Gunther thinks, or apparently thought, when he started his book that Russia was Socialist.

Gunther's views on Marx from page 182: “Marx could have had little relish for the stupendous State Capitalistic structure that identifies itself as Marxist under Khrustchev and company. I do not think he would be happy at much that he saw, particularly in the line of Soviet betrayals of his original egalitarian ideals. Marx irremediably changed the face of Russia, but also Russia changed the face of Marx.” How Marx changed the face of Russia Gunther does not say—presumedly he imagines that he has changed Russia from a Capitalist to a Socialist land. By Russia changing Marx, again he does not state how. They—the Russians, have certainly betrayed Marx’s teachings. However, he now maintains that Russia is State Capitalistic with which we could agree; so it is not the world’s first Socialist State!

On page 182 he writes: “By scientific Socialism Marx meant attainable Socialism, as soon as possible.” Where Gunther obtained this idea he does not state— perhaps he got it from the Russians, and this is really offered as a sample of how Russia has changed Marx.

On page 185 he writes: “By crude definition Marxism is a philosophy; Leninism is Marxism applied to government in Russia.” Why he wants a crude definition he does not say, at all events he has the idea that Marxism has been applied to Russia. Khruschev is reported in this book as saying, “ Stalin was a great fighter against Imperialism and a great Marxist.” Whether Gunther agrees with this—there is no hint. As this statement was made a year after Khruschev debunked Stalin it represents a fair sample of K.’s Marxism.

From Inside Russia one gathers that Gunther is not concerned about the question whether Socialism exists in Soviet Russia—that is as far as he personally is involved We in the Socialist Party can hardly be expected to accept that outlook. We are very concerned about it because the Russian system is not Socialism and we oppose it. In all our pamphlets and in every copy of this magazine we define what we mean by Socialism. Nobody need be under any illusion that the classless society envisaged by Marx and our party, has anything in common with Russia.

On page 315 we read, “Socialist realism is not so much a doctrine as a kind of platform, embracing much, and it is not altogether easy to define. In essence it means the service of the community.” The author makes no attempt to equate this with the Soviet Union.

Gunther quotes Lenin on page 385 when he declared that “Soviet Russia equals Socialism plus electrification,” which is about as sensible as stating that Socialism equals Soviet Russia plus electrification.

Towards the end of the book we encounter on page 405 “How Socialist is it? Not very if by ‘Socialism' you mean equality of reward. The chief Socialist characteristics in the Soviet System are ownership by the State of all land and means of production. No accumulation of private wealth through the conventional business processes; no stock markets for private financial manipulation; national planning on the theory that the country belongs to the people.”

All this about State ownership and control of land and finance is the “man in the street’s” idea of Socialism, and would no doubt be shared by the Conservative, Liberal, Labour and Communist Parties. Among the non-Socialist factors he lists the banking system, people earning incomes with a great disparity, and the fact that people can accumulate any amount of money.

No mention has been made of the Russian rouble millionaires in this book, nor is it necessary to go to Russia to learn about them, but only to read Communist Party pamphlets before they get withdrawn for letting the cat out of the bag!

Finally, Gunther states that “This system has most certainly not produced a classless society,” which ought to clinch the matter. So long as classes remain there can be no Socialism—for the classless society is the foundation stone of Socialism which Russia yet has to lay.

The existence of an army, navy and air force, not to mention the armed police force and the special secret police, and a system of spying and intrigue equalled by no other State, finds no mention in this book, although Gunther mentions that there is nothing approaching democracy as we know it in the West, and only the most hazy ideas of how the West lives.

The recent developments in the direction of exporting capital (according to Lenin’s Imperialism, one of the hallmarks of Imperialism), finds no mention in this volume. The great internal National Debt is also not mentioned. However, the existence of classes means that there is a class struggle. The existence of a wage system means that exploitation is present. In addition, there is all the paraphenalia of Imperialism in Russia today based on Lenin’s Imperialism.

Horace Jarvis

Hilaire Belloc (1959)

Quote from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Men will eat dirt by the bushel rather than lose their jobs. And this is true of large men as of small." — Hilaire Belloc, New Age, 2/5/1908.

SPGB Dartford Branch (1959)

Party News from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American Civil War (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conflict Defined

The American Civil War was a savage affair. It lasted for four years and it caused the deaths of 600,000 of the young men of America. It wrote such names as Gettysburg, Bull Run and Shiloh into the history of human conflict.

It was a war, we were told, over slavery. If you were humane, liberal and democratic you fought for the North, against slavery. If you were brutal, despotic and contemptuously aristocratic you fought for the South, for slavery. If there are any legends of history which for their own sakes are worth preserving, this is not one of them.

In truth, the Northern States had little use for slavery. Their agriculture produced anything from lumber to livestock, for which they needed workers who were knowledgeable, adaptable and freely moving. Such workers were also needed by the modern industry, which was developing in the North. In contrast, the South, with its warmer climate, raised settled crops like indigo, sugar, tobacco—and cotton. It was profitable to work these crops by ignorant slaves, under a few overseers. This difference in economic needs was at the root of the clash over slavery.

The first negro slaves came to America at the beginning of the 17th century. Before this, workers were employed under indentures—and they moved on to settle new lands when their term expired. This was not a convenient system for the Southern planters, who needed a settled labour force. Even so, they did not immediately use the Negroes as slaves; at first they were treated as indentured servants (although they had no indentures) and when their term ran out they often themselves bought another Negro. (It is interesting that the recognition of this right was the first legal sanction of slavery in America). When the planters realised that the Negroes had no legal rights they dropped the indenture formalities and openly bought and worked them as slaves. This was the stimulus to the West Indian slave mart, with its history of cold-blooded cruelly.

Slavery takes root

When slavery was not economical the white colonists tried to abolish it, but were often prevented by the English slave-running interests. Any anti-slavery movement based on moral grounds, without good commercial reasons, was doomed, as in the State of Georgia, which banned slavery when it was founded only to see the law ignored and evaded. The reason was that the Southern economy was being boosted by the demand from Europe for fresh foods and new materials; cotton was of increasing importance and the planters would not allow it to be disturbed. The invention in 1793 of the Whitney Cotton Gin (which automatically combed and separated the cotton), stimulated production and increased the demand for slaves. The cotton plantations spread from the Old South (Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky) into the Deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi), whose red clay was ideal for this crop. The Old South traded slaves into the new plantations—in 1836 Virginia alone sent 40,000. The Negroes did not like their new conditions—the song Carry Me Back to Old Virginia is the lament of the slave who had been moved from the comparatively genteel Old South to the harshness of the Deep South. This area became heavily dependent on its cotton, and its pro-slavery sentiment became that much more fanatical and its planters that much more brutal. This attitude, although outdated, lingers on in the Southern States. It causes the riots in places like Clinton and Little Rock.

As we can see from a few dry figures, the 17th and 18th centuries saw a remarkable growth in the American Negro slave population. Over the 20 years up to 1671 the white population of Georgia increased from 15,000 to 40,000 and its Negros from 300 to 2,000. In 1760 the North American population was about 1½ million, 300,000 of them slaves; at this time the average slave holding in Virginia was 10 (largest 250). When the war started in 1861 there were about four million slaves in the Confederacy and some 230,000 free Negroes.

It was during the first half of the 19th century that the Southerners’ aristocratic pretensions became so objectionable, with the notion that they represented the gracious, hospitable elements of American society, whilst the Northerners stood for all that was brash and cheap. The uniformity of productive (that is, agricultural) , methods and organisation of property ownership tended to unite the South politically and gave it an important—possibly over-important—influence in American politics. On the other hand the North was comparatively disunited, with many economic factions each having its own functional and property rights. In the 1850’s the Capitalists of the North were stricken by a financial crisis and this, with the usual depression of the workers’ conditions and the greed of the industrialists, strengthened the Southerner’s conviction in his superiority. (The romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott went down well with this conviction!) Inevitably, the white men in the South looked on the Negro as a docile, dim-witted, sub-human; even the poor whites tried to get on the band wagon. Although they lived in appalling poverty on their tiny plots, trying to compete with the big plantations, they had their pride. Their skin—when they washed it—was white; so they could join the pro-slavery chorus.

Slave Empire

If the poor whites had little reason to get on their high horse, the wealthy Southern planters could offer strong justification for their attitude. They had invested good money in their Negroes, which they would lose if the slaves were freed. They wanted to expand the slave-lands into a great empire to take in the new lands in the West, Cuba, Central America and even Brazil. This empire, they thought, would supply the food and raw materials which the developing industries of Europe needed. But the Northern industries also had designs on the West and it was here that the conflict was defined. To win their point, the South rigged their elections, sending numbers of representatives to Congress based on population returns which included slaves who were not allowed to vote. They became more and more aggressive and impatient of the interference from the government. As the quarrel grew fiercer, one compromise after another was tried, but all failed. The Southern States wanted the right to run their affairs as they liked. And they were getting ready to fight for it. 

Jack Law

(To be continued.)

Link to Part II

Editorial: Memorable Happenings in 1958 (1959)

Editorial from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The events recorded by sensation-seeking journalists are not always the most important in the long run, and some of the happenings in 1958 that will do much to change the thoughts of large numbers of people will not find a place in calendars.

The year 1958 will be memorable because it will have forced a number of workers to look again at some ideas that have been blindly accepted for a quarter of a century or more. The first is the idea that State ownership of an industry and employment by a government department or public authority would rid the world of many evils and hardships. But coal miners, and railway and bus workers must have been doing some hard thinking during the past 12 months. They have found themselves forced to strike or threaten to strike over wages, just as they used to do when their employers were private companies. They have had to face the problem of what is called “redundancy"; there are more of them than the employer needs, and there will be fewer jobs for them in future. Hundreds of miles of railway line have been closed, and train services cancelled, bus routes have been thinned out, and now there are thousands of miners who are going to be hit by the closing of pits that don’t pay. That is the link between all these developments—the mine, the railway route, the bus service, that “does not pay” that doesn’t show a profit, has to be shut down.

The idea of nationalising the mines, railways and bus services, was that nationalisation would get rid of the old profit-seeking motive. The workers concerned should think this over and remember that the S.P.G.B. alone of the political parties warned them years ago that they would be wasting their time backing nationalisation.

Of course, it is not only the nationalised industries that have been affected. The falling off of production and decline of sales have hit privately owned textiles just as hard as the State-owned railways and mines, and the textile industry presents us with a harsh example of another illusion that ran parallel with the nationalisation campaign and was held by the same people. This was the illusion, prominent after World War II. that things were not going to be as they had been in the depressed ’thirties. No more would there be unemployment and the dole queue; for those “in the know” had learned how to plan for full employment.

It is reported that the Lancashire cotton towns are presenting petitions to Parliament, soliciting help because of the decline of the trade. One of the men they ought to single out for a hearing is Mr. Herbert Morrison, for it was he who, as Lord President of the Council in the Labour government, promised Lancashire that it would never happen again. It was in a speech he made at Manchester on 17th April, 1948, when he addressed 6,000 managers and workers from the Lancashire mills. We quote from a report of his speech published in the Sunday Despatch (18th April, 1948):—

  “Mr Morrison dismissed as a ghost from the past Lancashire's fear that slump must follow boom, the fear that the cotton people ‘might work themselves out of a job.’ Last year the whole output of the industry was only 5,000 tons more than home consumption before the war. For years to come, the home market alone would probably absorb nearly all that Lancashire turned out last year.”

Mr. Morrison said:—

  “Even if the rest of the world was only half as hungry for Lancashire cotton goods as it is today, you’d still be perfectly safe as an industry to go all out. If you make the right stuff at the right price you’re in a safe position as far ahead as any man can see.”

Much the same kind of optimism marked speeches being made in the other large branch of textiles, the woollen trade. Major (now Lord) Milner was telling Leeds workers of “a great future for the Leeds clothing industry” and Dame Ann Loughlin told them “they should be able to capture the world market in women’s wear.” The occasion was the opening of a new factory. (Yorkshire Evening Post, 30th September, 1946.) After 1947 the textile industry as a whole did go on expanding, but inevitably now it has struck the depression that was not going to happen and from a top figure of about a million the numbers in the industry have dropped to 840,000, of whom 50,000 are unemployed.

Unemployment for all industries is now on the way to 600,000, a figure that does not take account of the many who have lost their jobs but do not register as unemployed, and though the government professes to be sure that things will get better “in the Spring” they have yet to explain the whys and wherefores of what has already happened. What has happened to their supposed control of the employment situation and their readiness to step in at short notice to head off depression?

The Labour Party and the Tory Party, the latter with its belief in managing “full employment” and the former believing as well in nationalisation, can look back at 1958 as a year in which their theories were demonstrated to be unsound and useless to the workers. The S.P.G.B. alone can justifiably claim that it predicted both failures.

Charity (1959)

 From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

A giant activity prevails in modern society, one that approaches people in their places of employment, stops them on street corners, enters their homes, reaches them through the mail and over the telephone, appeals to them from the press and pulpit and over radio and television, one that in fact overlooks no means of making its presence and its wants known.

This activity is carried on in the name of organised charity.

Society in its present form is widely regarded as the only acceptable form of society. Its educational establishments have no alternative to offer and will concede none, even though they recognise that modern society was itself an alternative to a previous form. Its public figures pour scorn on suggestions of change, even though the less ignorant among them will agree that change permeates all things. And the daily press and other agencies of publicity and information deliberately lie about the views of those who advocate change, even though there will be found on their masthead a resolute attachment for truth and progress.

Yet those who find nothing seriously wrong in society, also find nothing seriously wrong about being periodically called upon to make greater appeals to gain greater support for growing numbers of charitable organisations!

Working people produce wealth that must, under the law, be delivered in its entirety to the owners of the places where the wealth is produced. In return, the producers receive sufficient of the needs of life to enable them to continue producing. This condition prevails through all the years they are capable of working. After that, the ones who are still living, if they qualify under certain government regulations, or if they have subscribed to certain plans, receive a pension entitling them to complete their “twilight years” under conditions of greatly aggravated want.

There are some released from industry who for one reason or another do not qualify for pensions. There are some who die or become maimed or suffer chronic ailments and have families. There are mothers, widows, children, limited in ability or opportunity to help themselves. There is a section of humanity that depends on the rest of humanity for help.

And the modern world, rather than deal simply and directly with this need by providing ready access to the storehouses of goods, as would occur in a sensible world, prefers instead to deliver the great mass of wealth to the privileged minority and tear-drenched appeals for charity to the impoverished majority.

Charity! Sweet charity! Upheld as evidence of the innate goodness of man! Bringing comfort to the bosom of the idle uplifter, salve to the conscience of the brutal exploiter! Providing an outlet for the energies of people who feel that something ought to be done and who might otherwise find time to think about doing things really helpful! Bringing relief to government funds and so, too, to the wealth of the owning class who provide these funds! Deepening the needs of workers by causing them to shoulder burdens of others more victimised by the rottenness of modern society! Degrading and humiliating those on whom it is bestowed, imposing itself on them as punishment for their sinful and contemptible failure to be useful beasts of burden! Hovering darkly over the mass of mankind, grim reminder of society’s benevolence towards all who falter in the field of exploitation!

Indecent, unwholesome charity! Preying on the natural willingness of ordinary people to help one another, even to the extent of depriving their own of needed things! Deliberately pursuing, hounding, intimidating, embarrassing those whose lives are already depressed, consciously designed to depress them further!

Charity! Symbol of a society insistent on preserving the extravagant extremes of wealth and want! Symbol of a society that neither intends nor desires to end the conditions that ensure its existence! Destined to remain and shame humanity as long as man clings to the property relationships of modern times!

The day will come when the human race will rise above its fawning subservience to an owning class. On that day the means of producing and distributing the needs of life will become the common property of collective man and will be operated for no purpose other than to provide abundance to all the members of society. On that day a Socialist society will be established, bringing an end at last to the exploitation of man by man, together with all the other abominations of Capitalism, including charity.

(Leaflet issued by Socialist Party of Canada.)

Credit and Debt (1959)

TV Review from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is television worth while? An appalling question, this; but it happens to be the important one. There have always been the disapproving few who would permit it only for education in gloomy authoritarian utopias. Warmly, one would reply that entertainment and fun should be part of life as well.

The awful fact is, however, that the small screen lives and is memorable mainly in its rare instructive moments. Steele of the Spectator told his readers that when the paper was dull there was always a purpose in it; on the TV, when the programmes are dull (which is most of the time) there is never a purpose in them at all.

All this is brought to mind by a half-hour which was purposefully educational, and single-handed—certainly unaided in the last four weeks—showed the television to be worth while after all. This was Dr. Bronowski’s New Horizons account of atoms and energy. Wonderful.

But what’s even more wonderful is the thought of this coming into a quarter of a million homes. The casual question here and there, next day, discovers several who were “going to turn it off” and were still drinking-in at the end. The adversaries of television should consider this. So, too, should all the snobs and ignoramuses who like to think the working class can understand nothing. Would anyone have conceived, only a short space of years ago, of the quantum theory being expounded to council-house tenants

That is the credit side. There are debits innumerable, of course. What is more, fresh ones keep appearing. The newest and worst horror is Keep it in the Family: the heart turns as heavy as lead to see respectable suburban families being wildly acclaimed and sent home with refrigerators because between five of them they know the names of five poets or six rivers.

The interesting thing, however, is that the producers, compères and general overseers in the rubbish factory from which all this comes belong without exception to what are considered the educated layers. University men preside in panel games which are low, vulgar and humiliating; while in the commercials public-school chaps and men known to public life for their forthright integrity give specious eulogies of advertisers' wares.

The obvious moral is that even the educated will do anything for money. But that leaves one important question unanswered. This is also the group from which all the sneers at working-class “ignorance” come. Granted, the dog Prolus may look unattractive with televisual tin-cans on his tail—but who keeps tying them on?

Robert Barltrop

The Passing Show: The Optimists (1959)

The Passing Show column from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Optimists

How times change! For a dozen years after the war successive Governments, Labour and Conservative, exhorted the coalminers to sweat and strain and push up coal production at all costs. The National Coal Board regularly took advertising space in the papers to tell us all how much the miners were earning, and to insist that never in our lifetime could there be too much coal. The miners, they said, had an assured job for as long as they wanted. Unemployment, dismissals, the dole—they were all things of the past. The future could not have been rosier.

Occasionally lonely voices were heard to observe that there is no security under Capitalism: that Capitalist industry has its booms, but also its slumps: and that the strenuous drive to produce more coal might well lead only to a situation in which there was more coal than people could buy—which would mean the sack for many miners.

But the N.C.B. and all the great parties derided these fears. Much scorn was poured on the “pessimists,” who were "living in the past.” All these things, it was said, might have been true in Marx’s day, but now everything was different. The laws of Capitalist economics, of expansion and recession, had somehow ceased to operate, so we were told. Capitalism in the coalmines was transformed now that it was administered by a state board instead of by the private owners. Many a well-phrased sneer was launched at those who "hadn’t moved with the times,” who "sought to apply nineteenth-century theories to twentieth-century conditions,” and so on.

The Pay-off

And now, what happens? On December 3rd last the N.C.B. announced that it had too much coal, and that it was going to close thirty-six pits. Between twelve and thirteen thousand miners will be affected. Of these, there can be found no other jobs for four thousand: they will have to "leave the industry.” Many of these are in Scotland and Wales, where there is already a high degree of unemployment. Their chances of getting other jobs near their homes must be slight.

So much for the pledges made to the miners that their jobs were secure. So much for those who said that Capitalism in the nineteen-fifties was not at all the same thing as Capitalism in the nineteen-thirties.

Sound Economics

Of course, these sackings are not the fault of the Coal Board. It has too much coal—to sell. If every family had all the coal it needed to keep warm this winter, no doubt the stocks the Coal Board have been accumulating would disappear quickly enough. But the system of society under which we now suffer does not operate like that. Coal is not dug out primarily to burn: it is dug out to sell. If people can’t buy it, even though they may want it to put on their fires, then, in the language of the Capitalist economists, there is “too much coal.” And when the Coal Board cannot sell all the coal it produces, it simply closes down mines, and sacks miners. In this it does exactly the same as would the board of Tate and Lyle’s, or the Imperial Chemical Industries, or any other private concern, in the same circumstances. Coal is a Capitalist industry just as much as sugar or chemicals.


Dr. Attlee’s Remedy

Back in the brave days of 1945, the Labourites used to claim that nationalisation was Socialism. Some of the simpler ones still do. But even these ardent souls must have been given a chill by the latest news. As for the Labour Party spokesman in the Commons discussion on the announcement, Mr. Robens, he had no explanation of how an industry now dismissing four thousand men could be called “Socialist” (The Times, 4th December, 1958). True, he pointed out that the losses on imported coal had been unfairly thrust by the Government upon the Coal Board, although strictly speaking they were nothing to do with the Board at all: and that apart from this fiddling with the accounts, the Coal Board had made a surplus of forty million pounds in its ten years of operation. This argument, while quite justified, only goes to show that the coal industry is now a profitable state Capitalist concern.

The moral of this story is that Capitalism doesn’t change merely because it is twenty years older.


Indiscipline

On December 4th there were two illuminating items side by side in the Manchester Guardian. The first was about the recent strike of the Argentine railwaymen for better pay. The Argentine Government’s answer to this was to mobilise the railwaymen under military law, and court-martial two hundred of the strikers for “indiscipline.” The strikers were sent to jail for terms from five days to fifteen months.

Workers who go on strike are merely acting on the fundamental assumptions upon which our society is based. Everyone has something to sell, and everyone tries to sell it for the highest price obtainable. The great majority, the workers, have nothing to sell but their labour-power. The small minority, the Capitalists, sell the goods and services the workers produce for them. When a chain of baker's shops put up the price of bread from sevenpence a loaf to eightpence, all that has happened is that the baking firm has gone on strike as regards the sale of loaves at sevenpence, and is now demanding eightpence before it will sell. When workers demand a rise in pay from seven pounds to eight pounds a week, they are not refusing to work, for that would mean greater privation: they are simply putting up the price of a week’s labour-power from seven pounds to eight pounds. They are just as much available at the new price of eight pounds a week as loaves are at the new price of eightpence.


It all depends who does it

What the Argentine Government has done, by jailing those workers who refuse to work for the old price, is to introduce a policy of forced labour at a forced wage. The most the railwaymen can be guilty of is a breach of contract: and under the Capitalist’s own law this is only a civil wrong, for which a defendant can be made to pay damages, but not sent to prison. But apparently the Argentine ruling class doesn’t consider itself bound by pre-existing law when profits are at stake.

When evidence comes through of forced labour in the Soviet Union, how horrified are the rulers of Britain and America! What denunciations are made of the Russian tyranny! But not a word has yet been said of the forced labour in the Argentine. The reason is not hard to find. The Argentine Government, with all the other South American rulers, is the close ally of what is called “the free world.” In the column next to the news about the Argentine railway strike, the Manchester Guardian remarked (about the United Nations debate on Cyprus):—

  “At this point the mute allies of Britain thought wistfully of the Latin Americans: the only reinforcements always available to the Anglo-Americans in a jam, but only to be recruited at the bidding of the United States, who had sought and cherished a back seat in the grandstand. Mr. Lodge was faced with the unpleasant alternative of risking the victory of the Indian resolution or mobilising the Latin Americans behind an opposing resolution, and so enraging the Greeks.”

There we have it. The Latin Americans, including the Argentines, can always be relied on to back the American Government in world affairs. No wonder the American and British rulers have nothing to say about the denial of human rights in Argentina. But what a commentary it makes on the claim of the British and American Capitalists to be fighting for freedom and democracy, when they openly accept the support of a country where the ruling class introduces forced labour to safeguard its profits.

Alwyn Edgar

To Boris Pasternak, And Others (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Think of those November days that shook the world in 1917,
When power was wrested from feudal czars and blood was spilled
"For freedom’s aim ” the news proclaimed 44 the workers' state.”
Where men were free to live with dignity and without fear.
Time has passed, how goes it now? Boris Pasternak,
You would speak out, but your masters did not wish to hear,
Or wish your fellow men to hear, your criticism of the state of things: In Russia your book was banned. 

No shortage in the Western Camp of crocodile tears.
(They only use the Nobel Prize to aim against their enemies).
We are not fooled, our masters, too. dearly love their status-quo,
Would ban and bomb, their wealth and power to maintain.
For all men must stir, man’s noblest cause to gain—
And everywhere this lesson must be taught for it to grow.
We know that the freedom and the dignity are still to come,
The state of things we share is still to go.

S. D.

The Hostage (1959)

Theatre Review from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Hostage by Brendan Behan (The Theatre Royal, Stratford)

The Theatre Royal. Stratford are at present serving up an intriguing pot pourri of entertainment in the form of a new play by Brendan Behan. The theme of “The Hostage” is the Irish Republican Army, and its action takes place in a dingy boarding house in Dublin. The "Hostage” himself is a young cockney soldier, kidnapped and held captive, with the probability of being shot if an I.R.A. prisoner under sentence of death is not reprieved. The Theatre Royal company put it across with vigour and exuberance. They have that rare quality of acting with the audience rather to it.

A tragedy? Well, hardly. The play is a bawdy, noisy piece of cynicism, often chaotic, even more often extremely funny. Characters are crowded onto the stage without ever overcrowding it. The boarding house and its colourful and at times macabre inhabitants are presided over by a veteran from the playing fields of old England, who at some stage in his career caught a violent aversion to all things English. His caretaker is a survival from the more vigorous bomb-throwing campaigns of yesteryear. Morosely humped over a table of Guinness bottles he bemoans that the I.R.A. has lost its excitement now it has become serious and dedicated. Many of the scenes between him and his wife bring an atmosphere of the music hall into the production. There are several gay. ribald songs, sung with great enthusiasm by various members of the cast. The play ends in a babble of noise and frenzied confusion, during which the hostage is accidently killed by one of the boarders.

Mr. Behan really hits out at the I.R.A. and for good measure takes a sideways swipe at practically everything in his path. He rarely misses. Perhaps that is the trouble with the play. It is easy enough to make fun of peoples’ misguided activities, and if that is his motive he does it entertainingly. But his gibing never probes below the surface. Mr. Behan takes his people at face value and holds them before us for our ridicule. Never does he enquire into the emotional feelings that inspire people to join such organisations. Never does he enquire into the reasons for such feelings. He should know them. As a member he once shared their hardships, and presumably their beliefs. The play is no doubt an expression of his disillusionment with the I.R.A.

Brendan Behan may believe that underneath our various national labels we are all just human beings. No one in the boarding house really wants the cockney to be murdered in reprisal for the I.R.A. prisoner. The hostage even finds the opportunity for a fleeting love affair with the young Irish maid of all work. Nevertheless, we are left with the impression that Nationalism is all great fun as long as it does not get out of hand and lead to armed violence and murder. But this is the usual result of intense Nationalism, and the I.R.A., as well as Cyprus. Malaya and other places, is a grim reminder.

Brendan Behan may have realised the dangerous futility of Nationalistic organisations, but what of the people he writes about? They do not appear to share his disillusionment, and here lies the real tragedy. Nationalism is one of the greatest barriers to the establishment of a society based upon common humanity. It is a pity this side of the subject was excluded from the play. The characters are really caricatures, both tragic and comic, but only the latter side is shown.

On the whole it is rather naive and one wonders what Mr. Behan for all his fiery Nationalistic activities has really learned himself.

John Higgins