News in Review: Berlin again (1962)

The News in Review column from the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Berlin again

Berlin seems to be developing into one of capitalism’s nastier perennials.

With each year’s squabbles over the divided city — some of the more minor ones being prime examples of the ridiculous lengths to which capitalist powers go in the risky game of international tit-for-tat–the Russians advance their cause in Germany a little further.

Last year’s wall, a temporary-seeming structure then, is now solider and more permanent. The East German police range their guns along it. This year the Russians have withdrawn their commandant in East Berlin, leaving the Western powers to negotiate with the civilian administration there, or else with nobody.

In retaliation the Western powers have forced the Russians to use a more direct route when taking the guard to their war memorial which stands in West Berlin.

This petty and undignified bickering is only the detail of a more serious situation.

The Soviet object, it seems, is to force the Western powers to acknowledge that Berlin — and indeed Germany — is permanently divided. (Permanently, that is, until another European war draws out the frontiers again, creating new zones of dispute and tension.) If they can do this, the Russians will have won a new foothold in Europe and another buffer state will be between her and any threat of a re-emergent German capitalism.

There was a lot of indignant sob-stuff in the press about Peter Fechter, the 18 year old who was shot down by the East Berlin police and left by them to bleed to death beneath the Wall.

None of the papers recalled that when Fechter was born they were all busily telling us that it was heroic and laudable to kill Germans. At that time the Allied air offensive against Germany was at its height; the persistent bombers killed thousands of Germans quite indiscriminately. It was not their fault that the infant Fechter survived, to die so horribly later.

Berlin is typical of capitalism’s international rivalries. It is fought out over apparently minor details. But its potential is frighteningly dangerous.

And it is all sustained by cynical lies.

Chinese Bomb

Although they were quick to retract it, the statement from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington that China would be able to set off a nuclear explosion in a few months was enough to send a shiver down our spines.

More bombs. More tests. More fallout. More suffering. More death.

That is the immediate prospect. For the longer run, China’s bomb will mean a fiercer arms race and an increase in the tension in any dispute between her and the other great powers. And perhaps in the end a bigger and more destructive war.

China, like any aspirant capitalist power, has long been determined to make nuclear weapons. And, just like the others, she will excuse them with any sort of lying propaganda.

Last year, the general manager of Reuters persuaded the Chinese Foreign Secretary to talk on this subject. Marshall Chen Yi said that China’s having the bomb would actually decrease the chance of a war, because when only a few powers had it they were more tempted to throw their weight about.

We may permit ourselves a grim smile at this, for it is the very reverse of the deterrent theory which the nuclear powers now use to justify their having the bomb. These countries have always claimed that what stops a war is the fact that they have an almost exclusive possession of the biggest of all sticks.

Who should we believe in this? London, Washington and Moscow? Or Peking? In fact, nobody need worry about the answer to that question.

For what will China do when she has got the bomb? Will she follow the logic of Chen Yi’s argument and give the secret to the world? To India, for example? To Japan? If all the other nuclear powers are anything to go by China will forget her big-talk and keep her secrets to herself.

And perhaps we may permit ourselves a grim smile at this, too.

Capitalism will always have its ghastly weapons and it will always have its paid liars to excuse them. While they are spinning their lies the weapons get bigger and more horrifying and the conflicts grow more agonising.

Still feel like smiling?

Farnborough

Apart from the little-boy excitements of the machines themselves, what was the interesting and significant thing about this year’s Air Show at Farnborough?

Not so long ago it was a popular working-class idea that the aircraft industry was bound to expand into the future and that nobody who made his career in it could fail. This was the reason for many workers—among them graduates from universities—taking jobs with the aeroplane manufacturers.

But like many working-class assumptions, this one took no account of the nature of the beast called capitalism.

There were no turbo-prop aircraft on show this year. Yet the British aircraft industry once calculated that these would be more economical to run than the big jets and would therefore sell better to the airlines which, for all their superficial glamour, must have a sordid capitalist interest in cheap operating costs. Boeing, Douglas and Sud-Aviation in France proved this calculation wrong. So the turbo-prop is a dead-end and all the money tied up in it has gone down the drain. BOAC has its last Britannias up for sale for next to nothing.

Now the British industry is gambling on the future success of the VC10 and the de Havilland Trident. For neither of these are the prospects golden. If the fears which are expressed for them come to reality there will probably be another big cut-back in the aircraft industry and a lot more of its workers unemployed.

The airlines, too, are facing their problems. To stay in the race, each of them is forced to buy the latest, biggest, fastest (which usually also means the noisiest) machines on offer. The result up to now is that the number of seats available far exceeds the passengers who want them. So there is fierce competition, especially on the Trans-Atlantic runs.

This has caused most airlines in the world to fail to make a profit. Last month BEA one of the few profitable lines up to the present—announced that interest payments had turned a working profit of £550,000 into a loss of a million and a half pounds.

We all know what capitalism says must happen to an industry which does not make a profit. Aircraft are something of a special case; there are elements of national prestige and strategy to take into account. But in the end, in one way or another, the rule will apply.

For a lot of aircraft workers it looks like being a very bumpy ride.

Fasten your safety belts, please.

Nkrumah strikes

Doctor Nkrumah has succeeded in battling many people with his latest round of deportations and imprisonments.

It is simple enough to discern the reason for his expelling the Bishops Roseveare and Patterson. Both of them were involved in criticising the Young Pioneers, a nationalistic youth organisation whose members are required to chant, among other nonsense, that “Nkrumah never dies.”

Nobody who knows anything about Ghana under Nkrumah expected the Bishops to get away with suggesting that in the country’s youngsters should spend less time in worshipping the god in Accra and more in the (equally futile) worship of the god who they say is in a place called heaven.

But it is harder to explain the detention of Mr. Adamafio, Mr. Cofie Crabbe and Mr. Ako Adjei. The first two of these men were up to the hilt in Nkrumah’s campaign against the churches. We might have thought them safe in their jobs.

Perhaps they were involved in the bomb-throwing which has been going on in Ghana of late. Or perhaps they were just becoming too great rivals to Nkrumah’s supremacy.

Now they have gone and Krobo Edusei, famous for his wife’s £3,000 bed, is back in the government after his dismissal six months ago. Nkrumah, already overloaded with jobs (among others, he controls the Convention People’s Party, the Ghana Civil Service and the Volta Dam project) has taken on the Foreign Secretaryship.

These moves may be difficult to explain to our entire satisfaction, but one or two things can be said for sure.

Nkrumah is a dictator. His Young Pioneers are a copy, albeit a weak one, of the Hitler Youth movement. In taking on totalitarian powers, Nkrumah has betrayed the promises he made when he was fighting the British for Ghana’s independence.

There is nothing new in this. Postwar history is full of examples of nationalist dictators who ousted their country’s occupiers and came to power themselves with slogans of eternal liberty.

Many people outside Ghana were taken in by Nkrumah’s propaganda in the old days. Shocked though they may now be, they still lend their ears to the nationalists who are currently banging the independence drum.

Let Nkrumah’s Ghana stand as a warning that national independence has nothing to offer the ordinary people who are misled into supporting it and who end up by being oppressed and exploited by it.

Dr. Soblen

The death of Doctor Soblen brought to a close another of capitalism’s nasty little episodes.

Soblen killed himelf because, above everything else, he did not want to go back to the United States to serve his sentence for spying for Russia. The British government, perhaps at the insistence of Washington, were determined that he should be sent back. To get their way, they were prepared to break some of the legalities which at other times they hypocritically defend.

Great Britain has signed a treaty of extradition with, among others, the United States. This treaty means that if, say, a murderer escapes to America the government there will catch him and end him to this country for trial.

This treaty expressly excludes spies. The reasons are obvious, all countries have their network of espionage and it would be embarrassing for all of them if, should one of their agents flee, he could be extradited by the country he had been spying on.

Soblen should have been covered by this provision; in a sense, he was. The government never fought his case on the grounds that he was to be extradited. They only insisted that he should be deported.

But deportation only means that a person is sent out of a country—it does not mean that he must be sent to any particular other country. He can choose, in fact, the frontier by which he leaves, if Soblen had been deported he might have chosen to go to one of the Iron Curtain countries where, no doubt, he would have been welcomed as a hero.

The government were, of course, aware of this. In the name of the Anglo-American alliance they ignored the laws which they themselves have made to make their system run more smoothly.

Soblen was a tragic dupe to the illusion that Russian capitalism is worth working and dying for. This does not obscure the fact that he was a victim of the callous cynicism which all capitalist powers—including Russia fall back on when it suits them.

South Africa

At the time of the Sharpeville shootings and the “Boycott South African” campaign many anti-apartheid spokesmen went to great lengths to show how South Africa’s economy would suffer as a result of world opinion and moral indignation.

Up to the present the owners of the means of life in South Africa are no more or less affected by trials and tribulations than their brothers in less race-prejudiced countries. In fact, some foreign industrialists think the place has some attraction?.

Textile chief Mr. Cyril Lord intends to move the contents of two cotton mills from Lancashire to the Bantu areas of the Union. He says the British Government has failed to protect textile interests against cheap Asian competition. Some 100 key men are offered jobs abroad; the rest face the sack.

A South African official in London said: “Mr. Lord will have the advantages of cheap labour among others.” (Daily Herald, September 12th, 1962.)

Will Mr. Lord continue to demand that the British Government protect their textile interests by keeping out his cheap South African cotton goods? Boycotters and “Ban this and that” mongers may note that, while workers may be threatened with ills such as unemployment, propertied groups do not suffer economically, even though they sanction or commit acts which are quite anti-social.

The Passing Show: No paradise (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

No paradise

Now that the native Cypriot owing class, with the help of those Cypriots whom it deluded into helping, has thrown out the former British rulers, its spokesmen are making clear to the Cypriot people that they cannot expect much benefit from the struggle. Archbishop Makarios, the leader of the fight for “liberation,” and now President of Cyprus, takes the lead. Recently he was reported as having admitted that unemployment has risen to an unprecedented peak (Daily Express, 22/8/61). He went on to say: “It isn’t going to be paradise.”

Who said it was going to be paradise? When the Cypriot propertied class wanted to throw the British out, there were plenty of promises about the good time coming when Cyprus achieved “independence”: but now the fight is over, the Cypriot workers — like workers elsewhere — are finding out that the only people who ever achieve freedom and independence in a propertied society are the property-owners. The Cypriot workers are no more “independent” or “free” now than they were under British rule.

Freedom and Justice

Another non-paradise is Ghana. There, President Nkrumah’s right to imprison without trial about two hundred of the opposition United Party has been contested unsuccessfully in the courts. Counsel for the prisoners, who have been in jail untried since November, 1959, based his objection on the presidential declaration that “freedom and justice should be honoured and maintained” (The Guardian, 29/8/61). The Ghana Supreme (Appeal) Court has, however, upheld Nkrumah’s Preventive Detention Act, and has decided that the declarations made by Nkrumah on taking office were “similar to the Coronation oath taken by the Queen of England during the Coronation service.” The declarations, they said. “merely represent the goal which every President must pledge himself to achieve,” and held that neither the Coronation oath in Britain nor the presidential declarations in Ghana “can be said to have the statutory effect of an act of parliament.”

Promises

Two points may be made here. The Coronation oath of the British monarch, to keep the laws and customs of the country, is one which would be rigidly enforced if necessary. Any monarch disregarding it would get his or her marching orders from the ruling class forthwith. Only twenty-five years ago the ruling class sacked its then figurehead, Edward VIII, giving him less notice than a well-behaved butler could have expected, simply because that monarch showed signs of wanting to ignore the code of behaviour laid down for him by the ruling class and marry a divorced woman. This code, of course, is not observed by the ruling class itself necessarily : indeed, some of our rulers marry and divorce each other with a regularity which would have made a Turkish Sultan shake his head. But the figurehead must observe stricter standards. And if a monarch was dismissed merely for wanting to breach a social code, how much mere speedily the ruling class would act against one who contravened the laws made for the benefit of that class. The Ghana Supreme Court, in fact, was well wide of the mark here.

But in the other half of its judgment it was on firmer ground. How right it was to pour scorn on those who expect a politician to keep his promises! President Nkrumah is not merely a figurehead, but the chief executive of the Ghanaian ruling class, and he is sure of his position so long as he serves his masters well. If the exigencies of policy require that opposition politicians shall be jailed without trial, then to jail they go. And no pious oaths, however solemn, about upholding freedom and justice can be allowed to stand in the way.

Anti-strike effort

But Nkrumah’s police-state methods do not stop there. Some five thousand port and railway workers recently went on strike “over Government austerity wage cuts” (The Times, 11/9/61). The Ghana Government has assumed “far-reaching powers to prohibit meetings, requisition vehicles, control traffic, and imprison saboteurs.” In the twin port towns of Takoradi and Sekondi, the centres of the strike, “convicted saboteurs” can be jailed for ten years.” Anyone suspected of hampering the anti-strike effort can be held for 72 hours instead of the normal 20 hours.” Police headquarters reported that all was quiet in the two towns, and all gatherings of workers were being dispersed. The Minister for Presidential Affairs warned civil servants — a term which includes railwaymen and some of the port workers — that if they stayed out on strike more than ten days they would be sacked and not taken on again. According to the Sunday Times (10/9/61), “the Government is now taking the strike leaders to court, charged with illegally inciting to strike.”

The Ghana Government appears to be going very near to making striking itself illegal — in other words, almost introducing a system of forced labour. What a change of front since the days when the Ghanaian owning class wanted the help of the workers against the British!

More Freedom

A third country to gain its “freedom” in the last decade is Nigeria. There, thirteen citizens of the Northern Region recently had a drink—harmless enough, one might think. But the penal code of the region forbids Muslims to touch alcohol. So the offending Nigerians have been fined, and sentenced to eighty strokes of the cane.

What good does it do the workers to exchange one set of masters for another?

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Now He Tells Us. (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now He Tells Us.

In November 1956, a British and French force invaded Suez. At the same time, Russia was busily suppressing the Hungarian rising and there was a rich field for hypocrisy, with each side condemning the other for military aggression. America, smug in her official non-alignment, tut-tutted loudly and it was mainly as a result of her pressure through the U.N. and behind the scenes, that the Suez adventure collapsed. The Israelis had already attacked and it was claimed that the Anglo-French operation was really a “police action” to separate the contestants and demilitarize the Canal zone. The Daily Mirror made mincemeat of the little piece of double talk, and a lot of people didn’t believe it anyway (a lot did believe it as well).

The real reason for the action was the threat which Britain and France saw to their interests in the area from Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal—only on August 8th of that year, Sir Anthony Eden had said “Suez is a question of life and death for us.” Moreover, the active support and encouragement given by Cairo to the Algerian rebels had long angered the French ruling class and here was an opportunity to put a stop to it once and for all. There was a sort of tenuous three-sided collusion between Britain, France and Israel—tenuous because Britain was not the willing ally of Ben-Gurion and, if we are to believe the Bromberger Brothers, as late as mid-October had been prepared to bomb Israel in the event of a conflict with Jordan. Tenuous because, again according to the Brombergers, the French wanted much swifter and more decisive action than the ailing and hesitant Sir Anthony was prepared to take.

Less than a year later, Merry and Serge Bromberger published their book Secrets of Suez which well and truly blew the gaff about the double-dealing and behind-the-scenes manoeuvres between the participants in this ugly affair. “We were warned” they said in a foreword, “that there might be denials for political reasons.” An under statement indeed—there were plenty of denials, including a denial of collusion With Israel, despite the mounting evidence to support it.

Well that was a few years ago and memories may have got a bit hazy, so it’s interesting to have the Israeli General Moshe Dayan’s confirmation in his book Diary of the Sinai Campaign reviewed in The Observer for September 26. General Dayan says that consultations with London and Paris had been going on for at least two months before the outbreak of hostilities, and when the Israeli attack came it was well organised and executed.! It had naval support, and air cover by some sixty Mysore IV fighters and fighter bombers—all provided by France.

We should be used by now to the lying denials of capitalist politicians, particularly concerning matters of war; none of them would dare to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s in the bitter irony of capitalism’s scheme of things that only long after the event does the truth trickle out; often from the pens of those who were doing the dirty work at the time. The Brombergers were not opposed to the Suez action; they were concerned mainly to criticise the way it had been handled, particularly by the British. The collusion, apparently, was not efficient enough for them.

By the way, the Socialist Party did not have to wait years before we took a stand in opposition. We published a leaflet in unqualified condemnation within a day or two of the start of the fight, and sent copies of it all over the world. Remember that on this ninth anniversary of the Suez crisis, then read again the Brombergers’ book and appreciate the soundness of our stand.

But not a drop to drink.

Water has been in the world a long time, but just look at the state of some people’s necks! Just the sort of funny to make a Hyde Park audience titter you might think, but if the drought conditions experienced in New York this summer become more commonplace elsewhere, the dirtynecks among us may be claiming some moral justification for their existence. New York’s water supply all but dried up, and you would consider yourself lucky if you got a muddy brown dribble at the turn of your kitchen tap. “Save Water” begged the slogan tied to a blimp floating over the city.

Droughts have been with us on and off for many years—I remember the “use less water” posters on the sides of buses when I was a boy—and are not a feature entirely of present day society. Their effects have however been accentuated by rapidly increasing demand, mainly industrial, particularly since the end of the second world war. In fact, even without droughts, the rising level of water consumption threatens to cause serious shortages in parts of the world within a few years.

If you are a simple minded type who looks at problem purely from a technical point of view, the answer to the problem would also be quite simple. Build more reservoirs; transfer water from one place to another by a grid system (the rainfall in Britain overall, for example, is still enough to meet overall needs); perhaps desalt water from the sea? Regrettably, though, the answer is not entirely a technical one, or the problem would never have reached its present proportions.

Why do I say this? Because the experts have been looking not just for a solution, but for a cheap one, and the first two alternatives I have mentioned would call for a lot of money. So also would the third, a few years ago. Methods of desalting such as conventional distillation, ion-exchange etc. have been available for some time (in fact the firm of G. and J. Weir patented their first desalination plant in 1884) but they were not a cheap proposition. The matter has been raised again now, only because atomic energy looks like bringing the cost down with a bump.

“Can water from the sea be processed at a cost which rivals that of rainwater collection?” asked Guardian science correspondent Anthony Tucker on October 5th. The first international conference on desalination in Washington early in October, seemed to think that this was feasible. The flash- distillation process would use the heat from an atomic reactor (already producing cheap electricity) to produce desalted water costing about three shillings a thousand gallons. Anyway the British and American governments are sufficiently confident to invest quite a few millions in its development and in the not too distant future, we shall no doubt be witnessing the familiar competition between rivals trying to capture the new market for this type of plant. It has been estimated that single contracts in this field could be worth £50 millions or more.

The lesson to learn from this is not that capitalism is incapable of solving some problems technically, but that its profit motive often hampers and delays their solution for years. As Tucker points out, man has had it within his power for some time to make the desert bloom again. However:—

The future of Australia and of many large semi-arid areas . . . will be largely determined by whether or not it is economic to secure the supplies of water necessary for development.

So there it is in a nutshell. We shall never be able to see the technical wood for the financial trees so long as capitalism lasts.

Gaspers.

“According to the new system, workers would be paid more for producing more, improving quality and raising the profits of their enterprise”.

(Soviet Premier Kosygin, speaking on new bonus system, on September 27th.)

“Action to mitigate noise is limited by economics. Our own national airlines have narrow profit margins, and if foreign airlines found restrictions too great they might avoid Britain and leave us in an aviation backwater”.

(Aviation Minister Roy Jenkins, to the airport consultative committee at County Hall, September 15th.)

“The worst drought conditions in parts of Southern and Eastern Africa for thirty years have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the edge of starvation.

(Guardian report September 23rd.)

“President Nkrumah said that Ghana would restrict production rather than put up with the present low prices for her cocoa”.

(Guardian report September 23rd.)

“I am not here to help the industry but with the intention of helping our company and our shareholders”.

(Egg Producer John Eastwood, speaking to shareholders on September 22nd.)

“I am not a rich woman”.

(The Dowager Marchioness of Queensberry, after having been robbed of £15,000 worth of jewellery.)

Eddie Critchfield

50 Years Ago: Upset in Accra: Dr. Nkrumah upsets his friends (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1951 the Gold Coast legislature for the first time represented all the territory’s inhabitants, voting in secret ballot. The elections of 1951 and 1954 were won by the Convention People’s Party (CPP), whose leader, Dr. Nkrumah was brought from jail to fill the newly-created post of Prime Minister. The CPP stood on a programme of independence from British rule and when they won a third overwhelming victory in the 1956 elections, Whitehall agreed to the inevitable. At midnight on 5th March, 1957, the Gold Coast ceased to exist and the State of Ghana took its place. A new national anthem—Ghana Arise, by Hector Hughes, a British Labour M.P.—was substituted for God Save the Queen. ( . . .)

The first signs that Ghana was going to betray the hopes of its friends came when Dr. Nkrumah appeared to be fostering his own little personality cult, by having his head stamped on the new coinage and going to live in Christiansborg Castle which, as the old residence of Danish and British governors, is heavy with unpleasant memories. Then came the expulsions and a Special Bill to allow Mr. Edusei to deport two men without the right of appeal. The municipal councils of Accra and Kumasi were suspended and so was the chief of the 300,000 Akim Abuakwa tribe. Several members of the opposition were kidnapped and from the other side, a plot to assassinate Dr. Nkrumah was alleged. In this hysterical atmosphere, it seemed. Africa’s immaculate embryo democracy had been born a deformed dictatorship.

The truth of the matter is that last March saw the end of Nkrumah’s days of agitation and faced him with the realities of power over a country which is trying to make its way in the capitalist world. The first reality was a staggering fall in the price of cocoa, so that the first budget was chillingly austere and the Ghanaian workers were told that it would be unpatriotic to ask for higher-wages. They had expected better than this from Nkrumah ; a national transport strike was called and rioting broke out in Accra. Another difficulty is that Nkrumah is struggling to establish government on modern capitalist lines and to stamp out the old system of tribal rule.

(from article by Ivan in Socialist Standard, January 1958)

The Passing Show: May Day, May Day (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day, May Day

Definitions: (1) A radio distress signal, repeated at rapid intervals, for ships at sea. (2) A working class distress signal, repeated at yearly intervals. It's the second definition which concerns us. You want me to justify it? Of course it’s not the way that Labourites and other left wingers will look at it when they assemble once again this year for their processions. To them it will be a fine opportunity to make the usual protestations of “solidarity’’, “peace”, “progress" and so on, with workers abroad which, for all the fire and eloquence with which they may be delivered, will be vague, empty, and not worth the ink that's used to print them in the next day’s newspapers.

May Day demonstrations began with the passing of a resolution by the Second International Working Men’s Association in 1889 to set aside the First of May as a workers holiday, so that mass demonstrations could be made to affirm the international solidarity of labour. But solidarity for what? Workers may have avowed such solidarity in 1889, but there was precious little of it in 1914, except perhaps in the only place where nationality didn’t count—in the grave. It has been the same story many times since then to some extent or another, yet down the years the farce of the May Day ritual has been observed.

But a “distress signal” I called it. Well, take a look at some of the things they will be talking about this time. Vietnam? Wages? The Bomb? Pensions? Housing? A superficial conclusion might be that the scope of May Day has broadened since the early days, yet really all these issues can be put under the headings of War and The Poverty of Labour, both inseparable from capitalism and very distressing indeed. Taken collectively they represent a massive S.O.S., a cry for help from a working class floundering in a sea of bewilderment. But the orators who thump the tubs in Hyde Park and elsewhere are just as ignorant as the listening crowds of the way to answer the cry. There is a lifeline which is there for the grasping, but it cannot be thrown by such as the Labour and Communist Parties; it is the lifeline of Socialist knowledge. When the working class have reached out for that, in no time at all they can haul themselves high, dry and safe, to a new world.

Sing, Bing

The wheel has turned a full cycle and Mr. Geoffrey Bing, Q.C. is back in Britain again. This is the man who was once Labour MP for Hornchurch and who climbed aboard the Ghanaian bandwagon when it began to roll some years ago, becoming Dr. Nkrumah’s principal legal adviser. He wasn't the only one to support that vicious and repressive regime of course, but although the two press interviews he gave at the end of March were noteworthy for the evasiveness of his replies to questions, at least he did say something. The other individuals and organisations in this country who hailed the new state, and incidentally sneered at us for refusing it our blessing, have all been conspicuously silent.

Now, what did our ex-Labour hero have lo say when he got back home? If we accept his version at its face value, whoever was to blame for the disturbing things that went on during Nkrumah's reign, it was certainly not Mr. Bing. He was “not there” when the notorious Preventive Detention Bill was announced in the Ghana Parliament. He was “ill” at the time of Nkrumah’s removal of the Chief Justice, and so on . . . He didn’t say what he was doing in November 1963, when the Preventive Detention Act was amended to increase considerably the government’s already harsh powers. He does seem to have learned, though, how unpleasant prison can be (“the actual physical conditions of prisons in Ghana are deplorable”), and how nasty it is to be “manhandled by soldiers” (his wife had that experience). Perhaps some of the five-year detainees could have told him all about those sorts of things if they’d been let out in time. However, that’s the snag with supporting dictatorships; the boomerang sometimes hits you before you have time to get out of the way.

“I have supported ideas and not individuals,” said Mr. Bing on March 28 in a final disclaimer. Ah, yes. Thats the crux of the whole matter, and if Mr. Bing had not said it, we would have had to say it for him. indeed he has supported ideas, and always the wrong ones just like every other Labour MP. True, not every member of his former party would be a deliberate supporter of dictatorships just like that, but so long as capitalism lasts, there is always the threat of it sometime, somewhere. And no capitalist politician can ever be entirely above suspicion in that respect. Even the best of intentions are derided and destroyed in the capitalist jungle, so that the democrat of today (perhaps without realising it at the time) is often a trainee for the dictatorship of tomorrow.

This is where we came in

Take heart, Lord Robens and others Who supported nationalisation of the mines in 1947. You think you have problems with falling coal demand and competition from oil? Well, so have others: this time it’s the West German coal owners who are running into trouble and are actually being paid by their government to take pits out of production. On March 17th, The Guardian described the Bonn government’s actions as “. . . measures . . . designed to help the coal industry to adjust itself to the realities of industrial life.” Which is a nice way of saying “no profit—no production”, no matter if some people do go short of warmth this winter. Incidentally, it does illustrate one point contrary to Tory claims; and that is that the profitability of an industry is not realty affected by whether it’s nationalised. It’s the current market conditions that count.

But don’t get too shocked or surprised at the news from Germany, will you. Governments often act in this way. A few years back, the British textile industry got the treatment, and before that American agriculture. Yet there are plenty of ill clothed and ill fed people around, aren’t there? Profit is the raison d'etre as far as capitalism is concerned, not human need.

Gaspers

“Just because you caught me polishing my Rolls-Royce doesn’t mean I’m a Tory. I'll vote Labour.” (Man at Morden Hill. Guardian report 16.3.66.)

‘‘While we act to suppress the ugly activities, if anyone dies we shall not be bothered." (Indian Premier Mrs. Gandhi. 16.3.66.)

"He (the Tory) must persuade a substantial mass of the voters . . . to identify the defence of their own interests and values with the defence of privileges which are—and are likely to remain—beyond their reach." (Why I am voting Tory, by Henry Fairlie. Observer 20.3.66.)

"A Conservative speculative builder in Cambourne this weekend described Mr. Wilson as "the nearest thing we’ve had to Churchill." (Peter Jenkins, Guardian 21.3.66.)

"I have a feeling that . . . voters are getting much more shrewd.' (Leonard Beaton. Guardian 30.3.66.)

World View: Out of Africa? (1998)

From the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a long contribution from journalist Chido Onumah who is the co-ordinator for Nigeria of the West African Human Rights Committee. We publish below the key points together with our comments.

“Washington has been too willing to downplay democracy and human rights for the sake of natural resources or diplomatic alliances”, the New York Times wrote in its editorial of 20 March 1998. Clearly, nobody is better placed to serve this purpose of giving access to Africa’s natural resources and providing a base in support of US diplomatic alliances than the various mad men who have sprung up (often with the help of Washington) within Africa and much of the developing world.

The US supported Mobutu after killing Lumumba and scuttling Congo’s burgeoning democracy; and Mobutu provided a buffer against Washington’s longest standing bogeyman, the USSR. Today, the US has found it convenient to recant and is calling for democracy in the new Democratic Republic of Congo. On February 4 1966, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup. The result was the abortion of Ghana’s fledgling democracy. More than three decades after, the country is still grappling with the rudiments of democracy under a military dictator that is making a travesty of democracy, yet Washington is contented and applauding that “democracy is spreading”.

Just name it! Where has Washington stepped into that she has not messed up? The US-supported Marcos and his murderous gang; provided a slaughter slab for the butcher of Uganda, Idi Amin; aborted democracy in Chile and installed the hydra-headed monster, Pinochet; wrecked Haiti, courtesy of the Duvalier clan. In all these places, the US was looking for a mad man who would preside over the wholesale transfer of natural resources to America’s multinationals and do her dirty job in its so-called war with communism. Nothing mattered beyond the immediate economic and political gains of Washington. Not even the sight of mutilated bodies of defenceless and innocent kids who were victims of the dastardly actions of such scum as Jonas Savimbi and his cohorts who were armed and financed by the US could move her to change her position.

The American society is a predatory society and it can survive only by aggressively expanding and conquering new markets from which to extract profit. What Washington aims at creating in West Africa, as in other areas that are under its sphere of influence, is a club of IMF/World Bank puppets. The reason is simple. West African despots—as always quislings of America and her Western accomplices—who mutate into civilian presidents make all the difference between the acceptance or rejection of the West’s obnoxious economic policies and by extension, the survival or collapse of their businesses. The examples of Ghana, Burkina Faso and The Gambia are indicative of this trend. The IMF/World Bank and their host governments cannot be too sure what the “new man” would do (a case of the devil you know); so why not support a Jerry Rawlings, Blaise Campaore or Yahya Jammeh even where their transition to civil rule succeeds only in furthering neo-patrimonialism. As one of the puppets of international monopoly capital, Washington is sure Abacha will execute structural adjustment, devaluation, privatisation and such other infernal policies the IMF/World Bank may deem necessary to recommend for Nigeria’s underdevelopment. This support and manipulation of Abacha is necessary to prevent the toiling masses from uniting in a revolution that would threaten international monopoly capital.

The basic fallout of Mr Clinton’s visit to Africa is that the world would move into the new century with all the prejudices, including the onslaught of imperialism (courtesy of America) which have made the 20th century a nightmare. It is difficult to imagine what could be a greater threat to world peace in the new millennium than the American establishment which is nothing but a scourge. Fanon wrote that every generation must discover its mission. Africa’s emergent activists, from Cape Coast to Cairo, must enter the new millennium boldly determined to confront the monster of imperialism. Those who are ready to liberate Africa from the clutches of poverty, illiteracy and general underdevelopment and expand the frontiers of democracy cannot look up to the West, America particularly. They must be ready to struggle for these rights. Apologies from the great-grand-children of slave traders would not serve any purpose. In fact, the US has committed too many grave crimes against the African continent that apologies would only serve to obfuscate these crimes.

Imperialism is like the common cold; you either fight it or go to bed with it. There cannot be half measures or a middle course. This is a new era in which people, particularly exploited people, do not look up to any godfather. Certainly, the US will fail in Nigeria as she failed in Vietnam, Cuba and everywhere else she has sought to extend her bloody fang.

Chido Onumah, 

Ghana

Reply: 

We fully accept that American foreign policy is determined by economic (trade, investments, raw materials) and strategic considerations, but so is that of every other capitalist country. To single out America for special opposition is to play the game either of other capitalist powers (such as Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China, etc) or of some would-be African ruling class.

We have to say too that we cannot accept that Ghana under Nkrumah or the Congo under Lumumba were examples of “burgeoning democracy”. Certainly, both Nkrumah and Lumumba were anti-US imperialism but they were not democrats either in practice or in theory. They favoured and tried to establish one-party regimes, on the model that then existed in Russia. In fact, they perfectly illustrate our point above about opposition to one particular “imperialist” power playing the game of its rivals—in their time, “anti-imperialism” was the ideology under which state-capitalist Russia sought to further its economic and strategic interests.

If we have put the word “imperialism” in the previous paragraph in inverted commas this is because we don’t accept Lenin’s theory of imperialism (which sees the struggle at world level as being between imperialist and anti-imperialist forces) with its implication that “imperialism” is something different and worse than capitalism. World capitalism, not the “imperialism” of particular capitalist powers, is the cause of the problems workers all over the world suffer from, and the solution to the problems of workers in Africa lies not in kicking American imperialism out of Africa but in uniting with workers in the rest of the world to replace the world capitalist system by world socialism. This is the aim of the World Socialist Movement. –Editors.

New States—old story (1964)

From the May 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in an age of newly rising capitalist states. The years since the end of the second world war have seen the emergence of Israel, Indonesia, Ghana, and many others in Africa and the Far East. Often after a bitter struggle, the older powers have had to give way to the rising nationalists and hand over control of their former colonies. The winning of political freedom has been the green light for the development of native ruling classes, who have not been slow to consolidate their power, at times with an urgent ruthlessness which would have won the admiration of a Hitler or a Stalin. And in this, they have, of course, applied some of the lessons which they learned from their erstwhile oppressors.

So the British and French empires are no more, and as the new states gain influence, this will have some effect at least on the balance of power in the world of capitalism. Ghana, for instance, has made approaches to other West African states, and it is said that Nkrumah is aiming at a federation with himself as its political leader, it goes without saying. All the same, it would be unwise to assume that the influence of the old powers has come to an end, because whatever abuse may be hurled occasionally from the petulent Nkrumah, Tshombe and others, they have to face the fact that they cannot exist in isolation from the outside world. That world is already the market in which they sell their exports, comparatively small though they are at present. It will become more and more important to them as time goes by.

But until then, and in preparation for that day, a great deal of development will be going on, for which capital investment will be needed in large measure, and it is here that the business men of the old world will see their chance. There is a sort of mutual wooing between them and the new states anxious to attract capital which their own ruling class are not yet rich enough to provide. So this is the sort of background against which we must set the Ghanaian president’s statement to his parliament on March 10th, that £540 millions of the £1,016 millions for the seven years development plan will be from private investors:—

He stressed that his government had no desire to limit private investment in Ghana. Foreign investors were welcome and could earn their profits here, “provided they leave us an agreed portion for promoting the welfare and happiness of our people as a whole as against the greedy ambitions of the few ”. (Guardian, 11.3.64.)

He went on to mention the part played by the American Kaiser group of companies in the Volta hydro-electric scheme and by loans from Britain, America and the World Bank. So we can confidently ignore the president’s lying claims, "made almost in the same breath, that Ghana is a Socialist country.

Now take a look elsewhere in Africa. In the Autumn, Northern Rhodesia will become independent, and one British textile firm at least must be very pleased about it, having secured an order from Mr. Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party for 1½ million yards of gaily coloured cloth for the national dress. The printed cloth will bear the inscription “Freedom and Labour,” which shows the ideas that the nationalists have in mind for their native workers.

And in Kenya, too, the British government is busy negotiating financial deals which, in the words of Mr. Kenyatta, will provide the capital for diversifying Kenya's economy and reducing its dependence on agriculture as a source of income. There is also the question of military aid here, which goes to show that the area is still of strategic importance to the British capitalist class. Quite clearly in the modern world, there are other means of keeping fingers in the old colonial pies besides direct political control. It is not just a coincidence, after all, that there is a large amount of foreign capital invested in India; for example, the bulk of it British.

But the larger powers were not the only ones to have lost territories abroad, and if we look further east to Indonesia, a former Dutch possession, we will see the same sort of process going on there, too. The Indonesian Republic was born in a welter of blood and violence. In 1958 all Dutch property was confiscated, but now there are signs of a reconciliation between the two sides, hastened no doubt by the emergence of the hostile next door neighbour, the Malaysian Federation.

The Guardian of March 19th tells us how anxious the Indonesians are to resume trade with Holland and to encourage investment. This is a case which is perhaps different from the others we have mentioned to that the place had been developed industrially to some extent under the Dutch, and their help is needed to undo the dilapidation which set in after their withdrawal. Nevertheless, the same basis is there—that of a set of native rulers who are in the saddle and mean to stay there, but who need economic bolstering from outside, at least until their industries get working and their workers have been adequately trained.

What will happen after that is anybody's guess. Perhaps there will be another attempt to grab all foreign assets, but this will depend in part anyway on the economic and military line-ups at the time. After all, Russia has not been inactive there all these years, and recently, China has been putting out feelers as well. It should certainly be interesting, then, to watch the progress of the new post-war capitalist states.

And what of the workers in these places? Certainly they have given plenty of support to the creation of their homegrown oppressors, and are showing all the signs of being just as nationalistic as their brothers elsewhere. But the bitter lesson will have to be learnt sooner or later, that the swapping of one set of masters for another of perhaps darker skin will not alter their fundamental position. When they find that they have to fight for better wages and conditions, they will clash with the very politicians to whom they once gave such willing and enthusiastic support. A new social system is the only worthwhile proposition—that is the biggest lesson of all for them to learn.

Eddie Critchfield

News in Review: Nkrumah falls (1966)

The News in Review column from the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nkrumah falls

After Nigeria, Ghana. After Ghana— where?

The African continent is crowded with newly independent states with leaders who, having come to power on the promise of freedom, have established dictatorships. Some of these have been described, with breathtaking audacity, as “One Party Democracies” or something similar. But whatever lies are used to excuse them, the fact is that these countries are dictatorships where only one political party is legal and where opponents of the regime are usually imprisoned or exiled.

The Africa which was once the plaything of the imperialists is now in a turmoil under its suppression. It may well be that Nkrumah is not the last dictator there to lose his office.

The history of independent Africa must be a great disappointment to the supporters of organisations like the Movement for Colonial Freedom, who were once so insistent that freeing Africa from European rule would give the continent a happier, more democratic way of life.

It was obvious from the outset that these organisations did not understand the problem they were dealing with. It was clear that the alternative to rule by the colonial powers was simply rule by a native government. At the best, this was the replacement of one type of suppression by another.

Sometimes it has turned out worse that that. In Dr Banda’s Nyasaland, for example, the government recently pushed through an Act which revived public executions—something abolished by the British when they occupied the country.

And sometimes, of course, it has meant outright dictatorship, with a leader surrounded by sycophants and living in continual fear of his life. This was Ghana under Nkrumah.

The African states have not yet absorbed a lesson which some of the older capitalist powers have found useful. A political opposition has its uses. It acts as a brake on a government's excesses, it is a method through which a country’s capitalist class can exert pressure on a government, and by publicising facts which are inconvenient to a government it actually keeps that government in touch with reality.

Nazi Germany, as many of its military, industrial and scientific leaders have since testified, suffered as a capitalist state because of the intricate, intolerant nature of the Hitler dictatorship. And it is hard to believe that Nkrumah would have gone to Peking if he had reason to think that his power was being undermined.

The fact that he did not realise this was, in very great part, due to the lack of an opposition in Ghana. Had there been one, it would have reflected the growing discontent with Nkrumah’s regime and with the country’s increasing economic difficulties.

The absence of a safety outlet meant that the whole thing exploded and Nkrumah, the great dictator, the redeemer, the man who thought that a dictatorship would keep him in power and would make him Africa’s man of destiny, has been hoist with his own petard.

Lord Robens said it

Lord Robens, who is chairman of the National Coal Board, is the best friend the miners ever had. Who said so? Lord Robens himself.

A couple of months ago Robens was made a Director of the Bank of England —a job which, as everyone knows, was created with the special intention of being friendly to the miners.

This elevation came after some years of Lord Robens busily closing pits and sacking tens of thousands of workers in the coal mining industry.

Of course, this process was never vulgarised with the name “sacking”. The Bank of England probably called it rationalisation. Politicians like Mr. Wilson probably call it modernisation. Lord Robens, presumably, calls it being the Miners’ best friend.

The mineworkers, however, have been doing a bit of rationalisation of their own with results which have made Lord Robens feel less than friendly.

Many of them have noticed the large scale sackings which have been carried out. They have also read in the newspapers that the National Coal Board has plans for more closures, more redundancies. Not unexpectedly, a lot of them have decided that the Coal industry holds no future for them, and they have been getting out of it.

During 1965 a total of 38,000 people left the Coal industry. But this was twenty thousand more than the Coal Board intended; they had planned to sack only eighteen thousand. The rest left on their own accord, which has caused Lord Robens to complain:

  The run out at this pace was something of a disaster for us. It has had a very adverse effect on the financial turn-out of the Board.

Now it is obviously very inconsiderate of the miners not to sit down and wait until the Coal Board decides to clear them out, and to jump the gun by going out and finding another job before everything is ready for them to be sacked like docile, boss fearing workers should be.

Perhaps they are applying the same standards as Lord Robens applies to the workings of the mines. He is interested in making a profit; they are interested in a secure wage. Perhaps they are disillusioned with nationalisation, which Lord Robens, when he was plain Alf and a member of the post war Labour Government, supported but which he is not so sure about now:

  He (Lord Robens) was in favour of rationalisation of the coal distribution trade but no nationalisation. (The Guardian 8/3/66).

Whatever the truth of this, one thing is certain. The miners who are leaving the Coal industry are doing no more than try to protect their interests in a social system which continually attacks them. Whether they succeed or not they cannot be criticised for taking the action; capitalism is a world where everyone fights for himself.

Least of all can the miners be criticised by those who so assiduously uphold capitalism, as politicians, as employers, as leaders of capitalism’s symbols of commerce and privilege. In this respect, Lord Robens lives in a very fragile glass house, and he should be the last person to throw lumps of coal.

Communist confusion

The Communist Party, which has never been famous for clear thinking, is deeper in confusion than ever.

To start with, they are hopelessly split over the quarrel between China and the Soviet Union. These two countries were, after all, once supposed to be in inseparable comradeship in the struggle for Socialism—and here they are squabbling over all the classical capitalist issues like frontiers and trade routes and spheres of influence.

For the Communist who takes seriously the claim that Socialism exists in Russia and China, the choice between the two must be next to impossible.

Then there are events like the recent trial in Russia of the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky, for allegedly criticising the Soviet regime. The Communists are in more than one mind about this.

Should they automatically condemn the two writers, as they have done in similar cases in the past, as enemies of the people, saboteurs of freedom, imperialist agents and the rest of the terminology which we all know so well by now?

Or should they agree with John Gollan, Secretary of the Communist Party in this country, when he said that “The handling of this affair has done a greater disservice to the Soviet Union than the works of Sinyavsky and Daniel”?

For a Communist who has always dutifully believed that the Soviet can do no wrong, and that the Russian government is incapable of prosecuting a man unless he is guilty (even before he has been tried) the choice here must be very difficult.

And what about the Communist Party's decision to abolish the Daily Worker and replace it this month with a paper called the Morning Star?

Is there not something honourable, to a Communist, in the word worker? Should he not be proud to sell a paper with it blazoned across the top?

Or is the Communist Party now trying to cover the association which it has always claimed with the working class movement? Has it gone in for a bit of market research and discovered something which was obvious anyway—that the history of the Daily Worker had made it, for many members of the working class, a bad joke?

Perhaps the name Morning Star is simply part of the Communist Party’s efforts to get in on the latest craze of modernisation. At their rally last month at the Festival Hall, the Communist Party were claiming loudly that they were the real modernisers of British capitalism.

They were demanding more expenditure on schools, a nationally integrated transport system, reduced arms spending. And naturally there were the usual inducements of magnificently generous pensions, family allowances and so on—generous in direct proportion to the unlikelihood of the Communist Party getting power and having to implement them.

All of this must have been very confusing to any member of the Communist Party who strayed into the hall under the impression that he belonged to an organisation that had something to do with Socialism. It must have been confusing to those who remembered the wartime days when the Communists wanted more spent on arms, and the days when, far from supporting modernisation, the Communist Party was opposing the Attlee government’s productivity drive.

Yes, all very confusing—unless we grasp a basic fact. The Communist Party, whatever it claims for itself, does not stand for Socialism and never has done. It is merely another, if rather peculiar, party which supports capitalism.

And that is exactly the reason for their changes of policy—and for the splits and arguments and confusion they cause among the party’s misguided supporters.

A boring business

Everyone knows that at election time political parties promise all sorts of rewards to people who vote for them— provided, of course, enough of them vote to get the right side into power.

From another point of view, though, the electorate deserve some sort of recognition for the tremendous effort they make to find something to distinguish the Labour Party from the Conservatives and, having found it, to make enough of an issue of it to persuade themselves to vote one way or the other.

At one time, perhaps, this was a little easier. There was a time when the Labour Party breathed the fire of revolution—or at any rate when they wanted to nationalise a few industries, which they passed off as Socialism. There was a time when the Tories stood for red-blooded Private Enterprise and for the British- Empire-On-Which-The-Sun-Never-Sets.

These were at any rate clear differences between the two parties, even if they were superficial. But even that has changed now.

Ever since the Labour Party came to power after the war, they have inexorably travelled the road which their nature and their policies laid out for them. They have grown more and more like the Tories. They have tried—how they have tried during the past few years!—to convince the electorate that they are no more than an alternative method of running capitalism, with no more nonsense about social revolution.

This has had its effect. Mr. Wilson has been openly referred as the best Conservative Prime Minister we have. Very few serious political correspondents pretended during this last election that there were

any real differences between the two sides.

  . . . no one could maintain that there is a black and white difference either in the politics or the competence of this Labour Government and its Conservative predecessor. (Robert McKenzie in The Observer). 

  If a Tory Government were returned it would either have to pursue similar economic policies or instigate an about-turn. If the first applies we might as well stick to the present lot. If the second were to happen, we should have complete confusion. (William Davis in The Guardian).

For the average voter, who wanted nothing more than to support a capitalist government, the election came down to a few simple questions.

Did he want a government which said it would build another aircraft carrier or one which said it would not? A government which said it would nationalise steel or one which said it would not? A Prime Minister who said he stood for action not words or one who said that this is a time for decision?

These were the limits of the argument between the Labour and Conservative parties. On the other issues their differences were hardly discernible and in any case both of them naturally reserved the right which all capitalist parties reserve, to change their minds when they are in office.

So the election was really all a massive sham, a choice between two similars. It was also, for anyone who is interested in the welfare of the human race and who realises the potential which lies behind the votes at an election, a terrible, frustrating bore.

Correspondence: Democracy in Ghana (1960)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

Reflecting in this letter on a chance acquaintance with Ghana which is now “independent” as members of the British Labour Party would describe it.

The Scandinavian Express speeded towards France. Seated next to me in the compartment was a Swedish psychoanalyst who had decided to exchange “Socialism” for an Italian monastery. A tourist pamphlet was sticking out of his pocket and began: “When the plane lands you are standing on the threshold of a great adventure—Great Britain.”

The boat shrugged lazily out of Marseilles harbour into the Mediterranean towards West Africa. For every one African on the boat there were two nuns all crossing themselves at the same time. My berth companion was a young French missionary (sent out to soften up the natives) who was later to read me pieces from the Old Testament and tell me that because I was an African my soul needed saving.

My seat at the dining table was next to an American woman tourist of 65 years, dressed and behaving like a girl of sixteen. Facing her sat a coloured Ghanaian woman married to a wealthy Swiss business man. She told us that because everyone in Switzerland were “equal,” she had left her child there to be educated in one of the “best” schools. It was much nicer to have it grow up with ex-Kings and retired millionaires rather than just Africans.

A young Ghanaian girl journalist sat on my left who had been imprisoned with her “idol,” Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, when capitalism was being run by the Labour Party. It was, however, interesting to see that she was beginning to understand that Africans were just as capable to administer capitalism as the white man. The poisonous black capitalist boiling pot of intrigue had disappointed one more. Yet she still insisted that the white Africans were interlopers and should be removed, which seemed like race prejudice in reverse.

The journalist had invited me to stay with her friend on reaching Takoradi. The next morning the boat arrived at Takoradi harbour. The police stood around looking like mixtures of male nurses and museum attendants.

After a confiscated passport and the refusal to accept the invitation of accommodation, together with a fantastic questioning, I was quickly deported to Nigeria, which was my destination. This ended my brief visit to the “model democracy.”

Speaking on “democracy” in Ghana, Mr. Gaitskell, that great “socialist,” said: “It is not possible for us in Britain to determine how you will develop your democracy. It is your affair, but I think in every new country emerging into nationhood certain principles must be observed. They are national unity, a high degree of personal leadership, and thirdly, and the most important, the preservation of individual liberty at all costs.”

How easy these words slip off the tongue of a leader committed to try and reform capitalism. The detentions, deportations and imprisonments by Mr. Nkrumah’s government are politely called developing “democracy,” supported by the Communists and the shifty Liberal, not to mention the Conservatives, who might have made the same speech themselves. One wonders just how much “individual liberty” the British worker enjoys under his “democracy.” What a garnish to hide the stench of British capitalism!

But there is still hope whilst Pacifist Fenner Brockway looks to God and black nationalism to “liberate” the African workers:

“God speed to the new leaders of Africa in the vast arena of constructive tasks which spreads before them! “

Yes, constructive tasks of maintaining the capitalist system in Africa.

Fraternally yours,

Obajtmi,

Stockholm,  

Sweden

News in Review: Wages Battles (1961)

The News in Review column from the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wages Battles

The big thing about Selwyn Lloyd’s small Budget was that it threw out a sort of challenge to the trade unions.

And one of the big things about this winter may be that the unions will accept the invitation to do battle.

The engineers have put in their annual pay claim and the railwaymen are certain to follow suit. If these unions get the same sort of treatment as the government has handed out to the teachers and the civil servants, there will surely be some big strikes.

This is what governments have tried to avoid since the war, preferring to inflate the currency rather than meet the unions head on. The Labour government, with its wage freeze, had perhaps the nearest to a strong anti-union policy.

Since then, the Tories have played it cool. But we were promised some changes when Mr. Lloyd went to the Treasury and the wage pause is one of them.

One fact, though, the wage pause will not change. Workers always have a struggle to get by and always have to fight to keep up their living standards.

That will be worth remembering if the wage pause gets a grip, and the usual bunch of muddle-heads mourn the days before Selwyn Lloyd as a time of free prosperity for the working class.

There just isn't any such thing.


Adenauer Again

Dr. Adenauer’s chances of keeping his grip of the West German Chancellorship were not, at one time, rated very highly.

Most observers expected a close result to the recent elections, with the Free Democrats holding the balance of power in a stalemate between Adenauer's C.D.U. and Brandt's Social Democrats.

And the Free Democrat leader, Dr. Erich Mende, was quite firm that, if his party was invited to form a coalition government with the C.D.U., he would assent only if Adenauer gave up being Chancellor.

Now that Dr. Mende has reversed his attitude and is agreeable to serving under Adenauer, there are one or two questions which many Germans must be asking, themselves.

How many of the four million-odd voters who put their cross against a Free Democratic candidate did so precisely because they approved of Mende’s apparent determination to get rid of the aged Adenauer? And are those voters feeling baffled, or annoyed, about this betrayal?

Whether Adenauer, or Erhard, or Brandt, is Chancellor will make no difference to the German working class.

But it should be instructive for them to observe the cynical manoeuvres of their politicians and to reflect that this sort of thing goes on all the time, all over the world.


Nkrumah Strikes

Dr. Nkrumah has made a habit of disappointing some of the well-meaning asses who supported him because they thought that he wanted to set up a democratic state in Ghana.

These people fall so readily and so persistently for any small-time nationalist who breezes along that it is fair to assume they are able to ignore any evidence which points out the error of their ways.

But surely even they were unsettled by Nkrumah's recent arrest of his political opponents, and by the propaganda which accompanied it?

When the Ghana government roped in the fifty politicians, the official statement justified the arrests by referring to “. . . acts of violence, secret meetings . . . strikes, sabotage, lockouts . . . conduct destructive and subversive, against the Constitution and other legal institutions of the State.”

Now this rings a bell. It is just the sort of vague accusations which colonial powers use to excuse the suppression of a rising nationalist movement.

To read it takes us back to the early nineteen-fifties, when Nkrumah was in gaol. The asses were braying, then, for his release, because he was supposed to be leading Ghana to freedom. Are they surprised that he has turned out to be no better than the rulers he replaced?

We know our asses too well. Even if they drop the dictator in Accra, they will soon be taking up the cause of some other Nkrumah of the future.


Labour Conference

What the theme of this year's Labour Party Conference?

Revolution ? Radicalism ? Reform, even?

Well, no—respectability.

Many responsible newspapers have been worried for a long time at Labour's inability to dent the Tories' confidence. None of them want to see the British capitalist class having to rely upon only one party to form their governments for them.

So they were full of concern that Labour should have a dignified conference. They all hoped for the sort of inoffensive, meaningless resolutions which would make the Labour Party appear as a party which any man of good will could vote for.

This is what is needed to make Mr. Gaitskell anything like a reasonable bet for Prime Minister.

The platform at Brighton played exactly as the press had advised and, except for one or two resolutions, the conference as a whole also fell into line.

This is the logical end to the Labour Party road of power conscious, capitalist reform policies. It is the end which Socialists foretold over fifty years ago, when the Labour Party were busily dubbing us Impossibilists.

Perhaps some of the Labour pioneers never thought it would come to this.

Blackpool, 1961, has done its share to show how wrong they were.

Was It Worth It? (1961)

From the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter has been received from a sympathiser and we think it will be of interest to our readers.

On September 4 dockworkers and railwaymen at Takoradi and Kumasi in Ghana went on strike against a deliberate attempt by the government to decrease the workers' share of what they produce. The austerity budget introduced in July provided for measures which would lead to an all-round rise in prices. In addition a compulsory savings scheme was introduced and a wage freeze announced.

The strikers were told that they didn’t really want to strike but that they were being forced to; if anyone wished to return to work the government would gladly provide protection. Very few workers took up this offer and President Nkrumah from a holiday resort on the Black Sea coast of Russia ordered his Ministers at home to get tough with the strikers. All those who refused to return to work were threatened with dismissal and troops were moved into Takoradi. The strike was, of course, unofficial since the leadership of the trade unions supports Nkrumah. The general secretary of the T.U.C. hurried back from the neutral's conference in Belgrade, quickly got to know the facts and did not hesitate to call the strike a “counter-revolution" and to denounce it as illegal.

This is not the first time that Ghanian workers have protested. Last year they were demanding wage increases. The opposition newspaper Ashanti Pioneer supported these demands and in September the legal daily minimum wage for unskilled workers was raised from 5s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. The austerity budget will make the workers worse off than they were before September last. Not surprisingly, then, they have gone on strike. The reasons given for last year's trouble are interesting:

  T.U.C. spokesmen blamed the workers’ dissatisfaction on the remnants of a capitalist, imperialist, colonialist system which still darkened the economic and social horizon. The minority and the Ashanti Pioneer, felt that the workers were dissatisfied because they saw top trade union officials and Government Ministers becoming wealthier while the workers suffered. (Observer, 28/8/60.)

For daring to make such observations on the development of capitalism in Ghana and for supporting the demands for wage increases the Ashanti Pioneer found that in future it would be subject to censorship. The Ghana T.U.C. spokesmen are right in attributing the cause of the trouble to Capitalism. But it is not the remnants but the beginning of Capitalism that is responsible. Ghana is just entering a period of capitalist development despite all the talk about "Ghana's way to Socialism." As Capitalism develops and more workers are needed to operate the new machinery the tribes are broken up: simultaneously classes begin to appear among the urban inhabitants. Already Ghana has a wealthy upper class:

  Ghana's first gambling casino will open shortly—but only for foreigners and certain classes of wealthy Ghanians. A company set up to run the casino announced today that in conformity with casino licensing laws passed last year, Ghanians will not be admitted to membership unless they have a yearly income of more than £1.500 and are not members of the armed forces, judiciary, police force or public service departments. (Guardian, 9/6/60.)

Very few workers in this country, let alone Ghana, get £1,500 a year. As it is, with the legal minimum wage at 6s. 6d. a day these Ghanian capitalists get about ten times as much a year as an ordinary worker.

Little wonder, then, that the workers are beginning to feel that perhaps they have no interests in common with all classes of wealthy Ghanians including the Nkrumah ruling clique. Many must be asking themselves as they survey the part they played in the struggle for independence: “Was it worth it? ” Socialists have said all along that national independence movements merely end in the setting up of capitalist nation states and are therefore not worth supporting. The leaders of nationalist parties once in power are faced with the harsh realities of running and expanding Capitalism in their countries; and Capitalism can never be made to run in the interests of the workers. If we look outside Ghana we see the same sort of thing happening: men like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika with more regard for democracy than Nkrumah have been forced to act against the workers in their countries, as the following report from Tanganyika shows:

  Relations between Mr. Nyerere, Tanganyika’s Chief Minister, and the territories’ trade union leaders are sharpening. The strike at the Williamson diamond mine which Mr. Nyere firmly ended after 12 days, brought this division into the public eye. After Tanganyika obtained an elected majority in the legislative council in September, trade unionists expected quick action to improve wage levels. But Mr. Nyerere has to be pushed into rash promises or actions. Working closely with Sir Arthur Vasey, his Finance Minister, he is endeavouring to maintain the climate of quiet confidence for foreign investment. (Daily Telegraph, 29/12/60.)

Dr. Banda, after his sweeping victory in the Nyasaland elections, seems to be planning similar actions to those of Nkrumah. The Sunday Express (17/9/61) reports that Suzgo Msiska, leader of one of the two rival trade union congresses in Nyasaland "has lost a great deal of prestige in the eyes of Banda and his colleagues. No sooner had Malawi emerged victorious at the polls than Msiska brought 800 workers out on strike for more pay. Now Banda urges: ‘Msiska must go.’ ’’

In the Congo politicians like Lumumba were elected to power on promises of wage increases which the workers didn’t get. So they went on strike. At first Lumumba called out troops against them but eventually gave in and granted the wage increases, but not before he had devalued the Congolese franc. So that the workers merely received an increase in money wages.

The plain fact of the matter is that independence merely brings a change of masters for the workers—and their new masters are more often than not their former leaders. Socialists see no reason why they should help such men to power. Even the elementary democratic rights of “one man, one vote ” and freedom of political activity that independence may bring are not secure as in events in Ghana in particular show. To those Ghanian and other workers who ask if the struggle for independence was worth it, Socialists reply that it was. not. We do not, of course, expect colonial workers to suffer colonisation for ever. We are just pointing out that independence is not the solution to their problems. Indeed, in many cases it is just the beginning. Socialism is the only solution to the problems of the workers throughout the world.

Adam Buick

Newport, Mon.