The London Bus Strike (By A Busman) (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

On October 18th, London was in the grip of an ever spreading bus strike. As each issue of daily and evening newspapers reported more and more garages affected and more services withdrawn, so the streets of London became increasingly crowded with motor cars and other vehicles and extra police had to be detailed for traffic control.

The strike, which by October 18th embraced 43 out of 84 Central London bus garages was the boiling over of a feeling of resentment that has been simmering amongst busmen for a long time. An understanding of the position requires a review of bus worker's history over the past 15 years.

Before the 1939-1945 war London busmen received a wage above the average paid to workers in other industries throughout Great Britain. They attained this position by their ready willingness to struggle and the favourable position of their industry. A passenger transport strike represents a dead loss of income to the employers. A stock of passenger rides cannot be built up in preparation for a strike and travellers do not take two rides in the place of one after the strike in order to recoup the employers for the loss. Further, it has a damaging effect on other industries.

During the war busmen were urged to sacrifice some of their working conditions in favour of the war effort. They anticipated that, after the war, they would not only regain the things they had sacrificed but receive many improvements in addition. They formulated a programme of demands which became known as the “Post War Policy,” to be achieved when the time was opportune. The time has never been opportune. With other workers, they were told that the country had to be put back on its feet, export markets had to be captured, the dollar gap had to be closed and the London Transport undertaking was financially “in the red.” There were no end of reasons advanced in favour of wage freeze and wage restraint and why the time was not opportune. A number of minor concessions were gained, an extra quarter time for Sunday work, 9d. per hour for Saturday afternoon work (see Socialist Standard, February, 1949), plus a few pay increases of 7/- or 8/-, the last of which was awarded at the beginning of this year. With the ever increasing cost of living the busmen have found that, despite their pay increases, they have been getting poorer and poorer.

This has resulted in a heavy staff wastage which the employment of more women conductors has failed to reduce. The wastage has become accelerated during recent years. British Transport Commission reports show that during a four year period ending 1952, 25.485 drivers and conductors left their jobs and from January 1st, 1952, to January 1st, 1953, there was a net decline in staff 1,012. In a sellers' market the opportunity was present for busmen to gain a higher price for their labour power.

The gaps in the bus services caused by this staff shortage have been partially filled by busmen working excessive overtime, an opportunity which many of them seized to build up their meagre pay packets. Early this year the busmen began to realise that they were missing a favourable opportunity and that whilst they contented themselves with getting extra pay for working seven days a week plus other forms of overtime, they were solving the London Transport Executive's staff problem and missing the boat that could provide them with improved wages and working conditions.

A ban on rest day and extra duty work was imposed at a few garages and gradually spread throughout the London bus fleet until it embraced almost 90 per cent. of the 114 garages and trolley bus depots. A demand for a £10 10s. weekly wage for all sections (Country Service sections now get a much lower wage than Central London busmen), a five day 40 hour working week and payment during periods of sickness became a rallying point.

The London Transport Executive claimed that this demand was far in excess of anything that they could concede and, although they made certain proposals for a longer working day with increases in overtime pay, they would not negotiate whilst the overtime ban was in operation. Then, without consultation with the men's Trade Union representatives and in a most provocative manner, they introduced into a few garages, a set of schedules that made drastic cuts in a number of bus services. This put the spark to the tinder and garage after garage came out on strike, many without the new emergency schedules coming out in support of those which had them.

The busmen are now claiming that workers in other industries have forged ahead of them and that the inconveniences of their job are not compensated for by the wages they receive. For getting out of bed during the small hours of the morning one week and getting home during the small hours of the morning the following week, for having irregular meal reliefs and a disrupted home life a bus conductor receives a basic wage of £7 14s. 6d. for a 44 hour week—a driver gets 4s. extra. Only by working on Saturday afternoons, on Sundays and national holidays and by performing irksome spreadover duties, can a man get his wage over the £8 mark. A high physical standard is demanded of new recruits but sickness is not catered for—no work, no pay, is the principle. A new contributor pension scheme, recently introduced, is so meagre that it is a matter for ridicule. Annual holidays must frequently be taken during the least pleasant months of the year. The system of rest days makes it necessary to work seven consecutive days before a busman gets a day off except when he has a series of Sundays free from work.

That was the case the London busmen were making on October 18th. A conference was called that day and the delegates from the garages decided by a heavy majority vote to call for a resumption of work and the lifting of the overtime ban in order to have the emergency schedules withdrawn and to allow negotiations to commence with the submission of a claim for higher wages, regulated overtime, to level up the rates of pay between the Central and the Country Services (the Red and the Green) and a number of other items.

The overtime ban had been welded into a strong weapon and it gave the busmen the initiative in the struggle. The introduction of the emergency schedules, by precipitating a strike put the busmen on the defensive and gave the L.T.E. the initiative. Whether it was consciously devised by the L.T.E. or not, it was an astute move and the busmen were snared. Now they impatiently await the outcome of the negotiation.

As with every other commodity, the price of labour power fluctuates with variations in supply and demand, but the fluctuations are not automatic. They are brought about by the efforts of employers to obtain cheap labour power when the supply is plentiful and by the struggles of workers to get more when the demand exceeds the supply. London busmen are working on sound lines in using the present high demand for their particular brand of labour power to force up its price.

As usual there are no end of well wishers and advisers who have cures for the case. Harry Pollitt and Arthur Deakin are for once in agreement in expounding a cure. They both accept that the financial position of the London Transport Executive precludes a satisfactory settlement to the busmen's claims. Some means must be found to improve this financial position and they both speak for a reduction in the fuel tax which would free the L.T.E. from a heavy burden of taxation and release a large sum of money which could be utilised to reduce bus fares and increase busmen's pay. This is an old, old, stinking red herring that dates back to the days of the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. One section of the capitalist class considers itself unjustly treated in relation to another section and enlists the aid of the workers to secure advantages for itself. In the early days of the 19th century it was the heavy tax on com that was supposed to weigh heavily on the workers by keeping up the price of bread. Repeal the Com Laws, they were told, and bread will be cheaper and your wages will buy more. They fell for it. The Com Laws were repealed after years of effort and the workers had to fight against the drive to reduce their wages as soon as there was a tendency for the cost of living to fall. The position will be no different for London busmen. If a reduction in the fuel tax was achieved they would still have to fight to get higher wages.

Incidentally, the London Transport Executive have indicated that they are not interested in a reduction in the fuel tax. When a proposal was made to them by the Transport and General Workers' Union to use the backs of bus tickets to publicise a campaign for fuel tax reduction, they replied that they were a section of the British Transport Commission which relied mainly on railways for its revenue. A fuel tax reduction would assist their competitors, the road haulage companies, to more successfully compete with the railways.

A reduction in the amount of interest paid to bondholders by the Government and collected by them from the British Transport Commission is another proposal to put money into the Commission's coffers and so make higher wages for its employees possible. It is not unknown for a Government in such a case to waive part of the interest charge payable by a nationalised industry, but this would mean higher taxation so that the Government could continue to meet its own legal obligations to the former shareholders now holding Government stock. It would, however, not in the least lessen the efforts of the Board and the Government to keep wages down as much as possible. The general body of capitalists paying the increased taxation would press for lower fares and freight charges not higher transport wages.

The Press has been mildly sympathetic to the busmen. There are many who say that the busmen have a good case, but . . and the “but” evolves into a variety of schemes to get more out of them. One scheme in the forefront is to introduce one-man-operated buses on a wider scale. They have already been introduced in places on the outskirts of London and in the provinces. One man only is required to drive the vehicle and to collect fares, attend to the safety and comfort of passengers and, in general, conduct the bus. Some development of this nature is to be expected for it has ever been a rule of capitalism that, when the employers are forced to pay higher wages they look around for ways and means to reduce their total wage-bill by the introduction of labour saving machinery. That ultimately means, not less labour for all workers, but more labour for some and enforced idleness for others popularly known as a slump.

It may seem to busmen and all other workers that the position is impossible of improvement. Not so. There may be improvements for some of the workers for a long time and for all the workers for a short time, but the range of all improvements is very limited within capitalist society. Not a reduction in the amount of interest paid on investments but the abolition of investment; not struggles for higher wages but the end of the wages system; not joint consultation between employers and employees, but the elimination of employment and unemployment, a world wherein everyone produces to his best ability and has access to the wealth produced, in a word—Socialism. That is the only alternative to an indefinite continuation of the struggle to get enough to live on for those millions who constitute the working class.

Busmen have always had one weakness in their struggles—inter-garage rivalries, inter-section suspicions, inter-service jealousies and a lack of close communication to allow of concerted action. The overtime ban did much to overcome those difficulties and give a common purpose. The strike, as it was not complete, has recreated the difficulties. To achieve Socialism there must be a breaking down of the rivalries and antagonisms between all workers in all industries and a unification, on the political field, on the basis of a clear understanding and awareness of their interests—AS A CLASS.

W. Waters.

Notes by the Way: What goes on in Abyssinia (1954)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

What goes on in Abyssinia

Outwardly the visit to Britain of Haile Selassie, King of Kings and Emperor of Ethiopia, may have the appearance of a courtesy call between two of the few remaining monarchies of the world. But it is an open secret that there are matters of more serious interest than renewing old acquaintance and revisiting Bath, where the Emperor lived during his exile after the Italian conquest of his homeland. The Sunday Express (17/10/54) reports that behind the scenes “a new treaty of friendship and alliance” is being negotiated. More information is given by the Manchester Guardian (12/10/54). According to this report the economic and political situation in Abyssinia is critical and the visits to Washington and now London are designed to obtain financial aid for development of resources in return for which strategic advantages can be offered to the Western Powers.

“The future of Eritrea and the Somalilands is the most important question affecting Great Britain and Ethiopia. Eritrea, uneasily federated to Ethiopia for a temporary period, has Red Sea ports of strategic significance for the Western Powers, faced with a revolutionary Middle East and an unpredictable East Africa. French Somaliland remains the only rail outlet to the sea. Italian Somaliland is under United Nations trusteeship until 1959. For the Emperor these lands with their large Somali, Dankali and Tigrean populations are a source of danger, and their future is of great importance. In 1953 an American military mission arrived to replace the Swedish mission training the Ethiopian army.”

“There is oil in the northern provinces and the American Sinclair Oil Company is prospecting in the Somali desert in the east. The existence of uranium was confirmed in 1947. Ethiopia urgently needs loans, aid and capital investment. In return she can offer oil and mineral concessions.”

In the meantime the Emperor, who is “at once king, dictator and government,” has such problems to face in maintaining his rule that it was at first thought that he could not safely leave the country.

Where the other capitalist Powers are busy furthering their interests Russia is not missing and would have its opportunity if the present regime collapsed.

“Soviet Russia, with an Embassy, a very fine information service, the best-equipped hospital in Addis Ababa and the ear of some of the best-educated men in the country would not be slow to build a bridge to Africa. Poverty and ignorance are widespread and the Coptic Church, the official Church with great temporal power, has old ties with the orthodox Church in Russia.”

Those who have wondered why the allegedly anti-Christian Russian rulers have propped up the Church in Russia will see here one of the reasons. The religious link has already been useful to them as a means of approach and influence in the Balkans and may now prove to be useful for getting a foothold in Africa. For Russian capitalism as for the others trade and the gun may follow the Bible.

Are Strikes due to Communists ?

Scoffing at the idea that the bus and dock strikes are caused by Communist agitation, the Sunday Express, always pleased to turn the attack against the Transport and General Workers Union, lays responsibility on the latter.

“The fact is that Mr. Deakin’s huge union, nearly a million and a quarter strong, is totally unmanageable. Contact between its leadership and the rank and file seems almost non-existent even at local level.” (Sunday Express, 17/10/54.)

Be that as it may the Express have an unanswerable point when they ask: “does Mr. Deakin really believe that ordinary working-folk with family responsibilities will risk their whole livelihood simply because hot words are spilt by a handful of agitators?”

Another point is overlooked when this charge is levelled at the Communists. They do not always support and encourage strikes. When the Russian Government’s policy requires no strikes the Communist parties all over the world fall into line. After 1941, when the Russian Government was forced into the second world war, the British Communists were at the forefront of the drive to get the workers to work harder, and to refrain from striking. Strikes were denounced by the Communists as sabotage “against the nation”—just the same sort of language that is now directed against the Communists. The interesting point to notice is, however, that the number of strikes and strikers in the years when the Communists were the loudest mouthed patriots and were telling the workers not to strike were just as high as when the Communists changed to the new line of encouraging strikes.

In 1951, 1952 and 1953, there were just over 1,700 strikes each year and the number of days work lost by strikers rose from 1,710,000 days in 1951 to 1,797,000 in 1952 and to 2,142,000 in 1953.

This was a period when Communists were supporting strikes. But in the years 1943-1946, when the Communists were denouncing strikers, the number of strikes each year was greater than in any of the years 1951-1953, as also was the number of days work lost each year through strikes.

From which it may be concluded, as we might expect, that the workers strike against the effects of capitalism and it does not make much difference to their actions whether the Communists are for or against.

Troops and Dock Strikes

The following is from an article in the Daily Mail (19/10/54) in which Mr. Roland Hurman explains why the Tory Government has been able to avoid the hasty use of troops in dock strikes.

“Three times during the reign of the Socialist Government, under Mr. Attlee, the Cabinet sent troops into the London docks. Now, for the first time in three years of Sir Winston Churchill’s Administration, the Government are pondering the problem of how long they can wait before ordering the men of the Armed Forces into action in defence of our peace-time front line.

“That Sir Winston has been able to wait for more than a fortnight before deciding on this drastic step is itself silent testimony to the growth of the country’s prosperity since he took office.

“In the immediate post-war period of shortages, controls, and rationing, most cargoes had to be moved quickly to keep the nation fed and occupied. To-day we are much belter off, but a trading country like Britain cannot continue indefinitely in the vacuum created by the dock strike.”

The Motive behind Capitalism

Economists and City editors have a double line of propaganda against Socialism. One is that you can’t do without the profit-motive because that is what makes the wheels go round. The other is that it is unfair to charge the capitalists with being money-grabbers for their real incentive is disinterested service in the community.

But last month the Chancellor of the Exchequer told business men that they should pay out less profit in dividends and devote more of it to developing their factories to meet foreign competition. This stung the City Editor of the Daily Express to the following:—

“Nonsense, Mr. Butler. Dividends are the life-blood of a free-enterprise economy.

“It was the promise of dividends that led the Adventurers of England to Trade Into Hudson’s Bay. To-day it is a national asset worth £29,000,000.

“It was the promise of dividends that brought Mr. Rolls and Mr. Royce together. And it is the hope of dividends that encourages the investors of Britain to risk their money in industry.

"There is nothing wrong with high dividends provided they come from justifiable profits. Any more than higher wages are wrong if the workers deserve them.

"Both are high-degree marks on the barometer of a nation’s prosperity.” (Daily Express, 16/10/54.)

Mr. Morgan Phillips on Russia

Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party, wrote for the Daily Telegraph about his impressions during the recent Labour Party delegation’s visit to Moscow on its way to China. From the article in the Daily Telegraph of August 21, 1954, we discover that Mr. Phillips still holds the view he has expressed in the past, that British Labourism and the Russian Government have a common objective but differ about methods. He writes:—

“It may provide food for thought that the apparently sterner Stalin said to us in 1946 that both Britain and the Soviet Union were moving in the direction of Socialism— the Russian road shorter and more difficult, the British longer and involving no bloodshed. It can hardly be said that under a Conservative Government Britain is still on the road to Socialism; yet Malenkov was at least no less friendly.”

Writing further of the difference between his talks with Malenkov and the talks in 1946 with Stalin, Mr. Phillips says of the earlier talks:—

“As I have said, we talked then of the two roads to Socialism—the Communist way and the Democratic way to which we in the British Labour Party are committed and irrevocably dedicated. Wc gained the impression that notwithstanding ideological and other differences, it might be possible for the Communist and non-Communist world to live peacefully and prosperously side by side."

Mr. Phillips gives us a fascinating example of the way one confusion of thought is bound to lead to others and make understanding impossible. He early imbibed two ideas, one true the other false; the first that the Socialist idea involves international co-operation and harmony, the second that Socialism means State control of industry or State capitalism.

Having taken this initial leap in the dark Mr. Phillips' further progress in error and confusion was as certain as the sunrise. As both the Russian and the British Labour Governments had leanings to State capitalism they must, thought Mr. Phillips, have a common goal; they must be fellow-travellers on the way to Socialism. They ought also to be able to live in mutual peace and harmony. Since, however, they were not in harmony but in a state of cold war the cause might be, perhaps, a difference about method, the long and the short, the bloody and the peaceful roads to Socialism. Happy in his explanation of the problem Mr. Phillips is now convinced "that there are grounds for a renewal of optimism" in the matter of Anglo-Russian relations.

The cold truth is that Russia and Britain are parts of the capitalist world, trying to survive and expand in the cut-throat scramble. They do indeed differ about method, Russia relying more, and Britain less, on State capitalist methods of organising industry.

The reasons for their rivalries and hostilities now have no more to do with controversies about Socialism than the Crimean War of 100 years ago had to do with Russian and British controversies about who were the proper guardians of Christians of the Greek Church under Turkish rule.

Mr. Morrison dissents

Mr. Herbert Morrison evidently does not share Mr. Phillips' illusions about mutual harmony between Britain and Russia and he wrote caustically in the June “Socialist Commentary" about those who think they can see Socialism in Russia :—

“We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that revolutions in other countries are deserving of our sympathy and support just because they are revolutions. . . . The idea still prevails that Russia has a Socialist economic system simply because so much is nationalised and planned; the existence of a dictatorship and the loss of individual freedom are regarded as unfortunate but irrelevant. As a result her every action—and the same now applies to China—is viewed with special indulgence.”

 

New Naval War

Nearly 50 years ago the growth of the German navy led to the campaign in Britain to build more battleships to counter the threat. It is different today. Germany is only just about to begin re-armament and this time, so the British Government hopes, Germany will be an ally. But the British Government is still building warships, and three new cruisers are to be completed. But against Russia not Germany!

Mr. Noel Monks writes in the Daily Mail (16/10/54):—

“They will be the navy's answer to Russia's Sverdlov-class cruiser. This was revealed last night by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. J. P. L. Thomas, in a speech at the R.N.V.R. club in London.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The New Chinese Constitution (1954)

Editorial from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Constitution of the Chinese Republic, endorsed in Peking in September last by the delegates of the National People’s Congress, was published in full in the organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties (Bucharest, 24 September, 1954).

According to the Preamble to the Constitution, the “People’s Republic of China” is “a people’s democratic dictatorship,” and the “system of people’s democracy—new democracy—of the People’s Republic of China can in a peaceful way eliminate exploitation and poverty and build a prosperous and happy Socialist society.”

It goes on to say that the Chinese Republic is now in a period of transition: —“The central task of the State during this transition period is to bring about, step by step, the Socialist industrialisation of the country and to accomplish, step by step, the Socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce.”

The claim is made that in the past few years the land system has been successfully reformed, counter-revolutionaries have been suppressed and the conditions have been created “for planned economic reconstruction and the steady transition to Socialism.”

After the double talk about “democratic-dictatorship” and the familiar Labour Party phrases about step by step transition to Socialism, it was only to be expected that the term Socialism would be found to be used in the Constitution to mean various forms of capitalist organisation. The following extracts bear this out:—

Article 5: "The ownership of the means of production in the People's Republic of China at present falls mainly into the following categories: State ownership, that is, ownership by the whole people; co-operative ownership, that is, collective ownership by die working masses; ownership by individual working people; and capitalist ownership.

Article 6: “State-owned economy is Socialist economy, owned by the whole people; it is the leading force in the national economy and the material basis on which the State carries out the Socialist transformation. The State ensures priority for the development of the State-owned economy.

“All mineral resources and waters, as well as forests, undeveloped land and other resources which the State owns by law, are the property of the whole people.”

We see from the above that the “Socialism” to which the Chinese Republic is said to be advancing, is a misapplication of the term Socialism to State Capitalism.

Article Seven tells us that co-operation, too, is “ Socialist economy.”

Article Eight reads:—“The State protects the right of the peasants to own land and other means of production according to law while Article Twelve gives the same protection to the right of citizens “to inherit personal and private property.”

Article Ten is especially interesting.

“The State protects the right of capitalists to the ownership of the means of production and other capital according to law.

“The policy of the State towards capitalist industry and commerce is: use, restrict and transform. Through control by administrative organs of the State, leadership by the State-owned economy and supervision by the workers, the State uses the positive qualities of capitalist industry and commerce which are beneficial to the national welfare and the people’s livelihood; encourages and guides the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce into various forms of State-capitalist economy, step by step replacing capitalist ownership with ownership by the whole people.

“The State forbids capitalists to endanger the public interest, disturb the social-economic order or undermine the national economic plan by any kind of illegal activity.” 

One piece of unintended humour is that according to Article Twenty “the armed forces . . . belong to the people.” Whenever the Chinese workers come into conflict with the armed forces of the emerging Chinese capitalism they should reflect on that grim jest.

Much of the Constitution is naturally taken up with constitutional and electoral organisation and with the usual high flown declarations of the “people’s rights.” All constitutions contain these latter trimmings and they mean nothing at all. The workers never get and retain elementary rights of trade union organisation, voting, forming political parties, and so on, without struggling for them.

The aims set by the Constitution contained in the articles quoted above have no relationship to Socialism, which is at present quite beyond the knowledge and acceptance of the vast majority of China’s largely peasant population.

Their promised land is much more like the Attlee- Bevanite dream (or nightmare) of a rigidly government controlled welfare capitalism.

Let us hope that the Chinese workers may be spared that fate.

The Economics of Capitalism - Part 3 (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from October issue)

Now for a few words on the question of money. To know the relative value of an article we must give that value an independent form; a form apart from the form of the article whose value we wish to indicate. This we do when we say that there is ten shillings worth of value in 20 loaves. The value concealed in the loaves is put into the form of ten shillings and we are then able to compare the value of the loaves with the values of other articles whose value is expressed in a similar form. It is like comparing the weights of given quantities of soap, iron, and lead, by expressing their weights in hundredweights, quarters, and pounds. The ten shillings is the price or monetary expression of the value of the loaves, or, in the language of economics, the value equivalent. As previously mentioned it represents a definite portion of gold.

Gold is the money commodity and the basis of all currencies to-day. Gold can only serve as the value equivalent because it is also a product of labour and has a value determined by the quantity of labour required to produce it. As the universal equivalent it gives a visible expression to the values of all other commodities, but to find out the relative value of gold you must reverse the relation and look upon all other commodities as the expression of the value of gold, an unending series.

Gold has only become the universal equivalent as the result of the action of custom. In early times cattle, silver, and many other things occupied the part of universal equivalent, but owing to its handiness, durability and malleability gold finally replaced all the others as the generally accepted substance of money. It is obvious that the money commodity must be subject to little variations in value through wear and tear, and comprise in a small compass as much value as possible; gold fufilled this better than anything else, and thus became the national and international medium of exchange.

Money has several functions and we have already indicated its function as a measure of value. As a medium of circulation it circulates commodities; commodities are transformed into money and the money received is transformed into other commodities, so the process goes on in an unending series in which commodities come into circulation and disappear; money remains in the sphere of circulation although it is occasionally hoarded for a time. Commodities drop out of circulation to be consumed but money is never consumed.

Another function of money is that of acting as standard of price—tons, pounds, and ounces of gold, a measure of the weight of gold, and as such it never varies. However prices may change, an ounce of gold is always an ounce of gold, in the same way as a yard measure is always a yard long.

For currency purposes money functions as money of account; coins of a certain weight, purity, and size are struck for the purpose of carrying about and making reckoning easier. Up to 1914 gold coins circulated in England as currency, and the following remarks apply to that period; the effect of the withdrawal of gold coins from circulation we will see later.

To continue then, on the pre-1914 basis. In those days the Mint price of gold, the amount per ounce which the Mint was always prepared to pay for gold, until England went off the Gold Standard (refused to pay in gold the face value of its bank notes), was £3 17s. 10½d. This was not really a price but a statement of the number of gold coins of the necessary weight and fineness which can be struck from a given weight of gold. 1869 sovereigns can be struck (or coined) from 40 pounds of gold, and, therefore, three sovereigns and a fraction (17/10½ in silver and copper) from one ounce. In practice people sold gold to the Bank for £3 17s. 9d. (the Bank price) and the Bank sold it to the Mint for £3 17s. 10½d. It is important to bear in mind that an ounce of gold is the standard, and is divided arbitrarily into £3 17s. 10½d. in a similar way to which a foot is divided into twelve inches and a circle into 360 degrees. Only the gold coin circulates at its value, its divisions are represented by silver and copper symbols. The latter have no direct relation to the value of silver and copper, and there was a strict limitation upon the amount of each that was legal tender. No matter how the value of gold might alter or prices change an ounce of gold always coined into £3 17s. 10½d., and the Mint would always pay this "price” for it. Gold sent abroad figured at this “price” less cost of transport and insurance.

In another function of money, as means of payment, it was found that gold could be conveniently replaced by paper symbols, bank notes. This symbolic money turned out to be a source of considerable trouble. Banknotes were printed in various denominations and engraved with a statement to the effect that the issuers would always pay their face value in gold on demand. A separate department of the Bank of England was set up for the sole purpose of dealing with notes, the Issue Department. This department kept in its vaults a quantity of gold, plus a small percentage of government securities, that covered every note issued; the notes were referred to as “gold backed.” Thus a £5 note was backed by gold, exchangeable into gold at any time, and therefore as good as five golden sovereigns. Anyone, could present a note at the Bank and had to be paid in gold if he demanded it. As long as gold circulates freely in currency, or, to put it another way, as long as there is a free market for gold, the gold-backed paper symbols played their allotted parts adequately.

The sum total of money current (or in currency) during a period is equal to the sum of the prices to be realised plus the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments that balance each other and minus the number of times in which the same coins pass from hand to hand, in turn as means of circulation and means of payment. Money is current that represents commodities long since sold, and commodities circulate whose equivalent in money will not appear till some future date; debts contracted each day, and payments falling due on the same day, are not quantities that can be measured in order to foretell the exact amount of currency that will be required on a given day.

As long as gold coin circulates a surplus of currency will find its way back to the bank and can be melted down for export or for other purposes. When part of the currency consists of the gold-backed notes we have described the surplus notes can be withdrawn and their gold backing subjected to the same process as gold coin.

After 1914 inconvertible bank notes (bank notes that would not be exchanged-for gold at face value on demand) were issued, the celebrated "Bradburies,” and then notes began to get out of touch with the sum of gold they were supposed to represent; currency became overstocked with a paper that could not be drained away. When crises came gold was demanded as the only form of wealth whose value remained dependable (hard cash) and higher paper prices were paid for gold. The decline in the value of paper money, as it was losing direct touch with gold, meant that more paper money was required for currency purposes and so, once inflation had commenced, the situation got worse until the time arrived when the curious position arose of an ounce of gold, equal to about £4 in gold coins, costing £8 in paper notes. We will conclude these remarks on money with a quotation from “Capital” relating to bank notes:—

“The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their various denominations, say, £1, £5, etc., are printed. In so far as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can spring up only from the proportion in which that paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not exceed in amount the gold , (or silver as the case may be) which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the quantity or gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulating medium in a given country never sinks below a certain minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its constituent parts, or that pieces of gold of which it consists are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circulation. It can therefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities. There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money exceed its proper limit, which is the amount in gold coins of the like denomination that can actually be current, it would, apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, represent only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact £1 would be the money-name not of ¼ of an ounce, but of ⅛ of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2” (page 103-4, Glaisher edn., 1909).

 Gilmac.

(To be continued)

The rich also have their burdens . . . (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we mention the miseries of the poor we are assured that the rich also have their burdens. If this is so why do the rich object so fiercely to the prospect of being relieved of their burdens? There must be a catch somewhere!

* * * *

The trouble with the rich is to find occupation; the same trouble afflicts the poor. But the rich only want easy and pleasant occupation, something to help them to pass their idle lives away; the poor must find occupation, usually arduous and unpleasant, in order to keep their lives from passing away.

The same old story in Nigeria (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is taken from the Daily Times, published in Onitsha, Nigeria (25 June, 1954). It is a revealing comment on the problem of building up capitalism in Nigeria now that that country has been “freed” from direct British rule. The workers are to work harder in order to attract foreign investors, but are promised that they will not be “slaves.” They are in short to be wage-slaves like the workers in Britain.

“Generally the output of a Nigerian worker and that of his counterpart in a similar job in Britain are in the ratio of 1—4 that of a Nigerian miner is about a third of that of his British counterpart. This statement was made here by Mr. R. A. Njoku, Central Minister of Commerce and Industries, in the course of a lecture which he delivered under the auspices of the local branch of the N.C.N.C. If industrialisation was to be successfully carried out wages, cost of transport, and other recurrent expenses, he stated, should not be too high, otherwise there might be inflation of prices. The Minister regretted that the productivity of Nigerian workers was so low and appealed to everyone to be more productive. It was not easy, he said, to get foreign capital. We have to persuade investors to come. They are not anxious to come. Mr. Njoku said industrialisation could be run on a partnership basis with adequate safeguards for aliens with capital and for the country and that a stable form of government was essential: he said that any venture which would make Nigerians slaves would never be allowed in the country.”

H. G. B.

The Challenge of Socialism (1954)

Book Review from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Out of Oxford, home of lost causes, comes “The Challenge of Socialism,” by Henry Pelling, tutor and don of Queen’s College, Oxford, in “The British and Political Series.”

It gives a summary of Anarchist and Socialist (also economic writers), speakers and writers from 1700 onwards down to Our Herbie, and, while treating carefully Marx and Engels, does not stress Materialism and quite carefully ignores S.P.G.B., although giving a good record of S.D.F. and Labour politicians during this last half century.

It is quite a good book of reference and worth a glimpse. 300 pages.

J. M.B.

50 Years Ago: Labour Parties (1954)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

To a Socialist the spectacle of the Labour Parties at home and in the Colonies affords a very interesting study of the relations of Labour politics to Socialism. To one who, in forming opinions on the tendencies manifested in society today, is accustomed to look merely on the surface of things, the formation of these Labour parties in various parts of the British Empire may appear to be the forerunner of a great revolutionary movement on the part of organised labour. This view will be all the more strongly held if he should belong to one or the other of the alleged Socialist bodies whose business meetings consist of talking about the Labour Representation Committee, the “Labour” movement, the “Labour” party and, more important than all, the “Labour” leaders. To a member of The Socialist Party, however, that is to a person drilled in the methods of scientific analysis, the innocent economics and puerile politics which form the foundation and super-structure of “Labour parties” at home and abroad, are more often sources of regret than satisfaction.  . . .

* * *

With regard to the Labour Representation Committee at home, it may seem unnecessary to criticise this, the most recent indication of the hopelessness of those who, in the name of labour, try to square the interests of the workers with those of their masters and secure justice for the working-class under capitalism. The programme, or what stands for a programme of this body, is of such a character that a good many loyal Liberals, without giving up in the slightest degree their faith in capitalism, would readily accept it. But in the eyes of the horny-handed sons of toil who run the L.R.C., a party is more important than a programme, and if a “big” party can only be got together by a small programme, then the less of the latter the better for the needy politician.  . . .

* * *

The Labour Representation Committee was called into existence by the Trade Union Congress, and, as the child, inherits some of the characteristics of the parent, the proceedings at the last meeting of the latter body will enlighten the workers as to what they may expect from the “Labour” Party of this country. At the Congress some of the delegates expressed the opinion that it would be a good thing if all the trade unionists were called off the L.R.C. They have issued a manifesto in favour of free trade, asked for old age pensions and an extension of the Workmen's Compensation Act. At the same time some of their leaders tell us that this very “Compensation” Act is responsible for the older men being flung out of employment by the master-class, who are unwilling to take risks attendant upon the employment of workers over a certain age. One delegate pleaded earnestly for “fair” rents. How wise! Fair robbery! . . .

* * *

The work of the Socialist here at home or in the Colonies is to build up a Socialist Party, clear in the knowledge of the irreconcilability of the interests of the wage worker and the master, ever warning the working-class of the pitfalls in the shape of “labour” parties strewing the path which leads to emancipation from wagedom, ever teaching the slaves of capitalism that only by the overthrow of the present system of society and the establishment of the Socialist Republic can the various evils confronting the working-class be removed.

In the country The Socialist Party of Great Britain alone stands for the Revolution.

E. J. B. Allen.

(From the “Socialist Standard,” November, 1904)

Back to Basics (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the tragic deaths of a father and five children unable to escape from a house fire in Birmingham the News Chronicle (13/8/54) reported that experiments will begin to fit asbestos hatches in the attics of the 11,000 Council-owned back-to-back houses and that the Council hopes that private landlords will fit them in the city’s 26,000 “back-to-backs.”

Disraeli is supposed to have said that in England there are two completely distinct nations, the one knowing nothing about the other; and another "wag” put it rather better by saying: “One half of the world doesn’t know how the other half lives and if they do, don’t care.” Many Provincial visitors see London, and many Londoners see Margate and Brighton, and even see France, but the relative number of people who see round English industrial towns are few. When talking about travel who would ever think of saying: “I have explored Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, and Bradford?”

First of all it would be best to explain what back-to-back houses really are, as many Londoners and small town inhabitants may never have seen one. They do not exist in London now, and never in country districts.

Following the industrial revolution of the last century, the need for cheap compact houses around big industry was solved by building small four-roomed dwellings, two rooms up and two down, with a similar structure attached to its rear, but its front door facing the opposite direction. There is no back exit, no front or back yard or garden. Many of these back-to-backs have no sanitary arrangements (some no water), and at the end of each street there are two or four toilets, to be used by the whole street community. On a nice warm Sunday morning a small queue will be seen sitting on the curb, in their shirt sleeves, awaiting their turn.

Standing on a hill outside Leeds you can see row after row of such houses, and the News Chronicle states that there are 26,000 in Birmingham alone. It would be interesting to find out numbers for many other English industrial towns.

Here again, to quote from the News Chronicle (13/8/54): 

“The hatches will probably be made from asbestos sheeting, which could easily be broken in an emergency. They will cost £2.

The only real solution is the demolition of all back-to-back houses, but that is impossible in the near future because of the housing situation.”

Does this need any further comment, a country—the home of the Mother of Parliaments, and one of the “forward peoples,” as distinct from the so-called “backward peoples,” a county that is at present spending £2,500 million on rearmament, is unable to cure the back-to-back houses question?

The real tragedy is Capitalism—the cause of slum houses and all the rest of our troubles.

David Boyd

SPGB Meetings (1954)

Party News from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party News Briefs (1954)

Party News from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Delegate Meeting is being held at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road (Near Victoria Station) on Saturday and Sunday, November 6th and 7th, commencing each day at 10.30 a.m. Social at Head Office on the Saturday evening from 7.30 p.m.

Hampstead Branch have changed the day and time of their outdoor meetings at the Whitestone Pond, Hampstead Heath. During the winter months the day will be Sunday and the time 11 a.m. Their previous meeting time—Friday evening—has been discontinued until next summer.

Glasgow. The City and Kelvingrove Branches are jointly running a series of meetings on Sunday evenings at the Central Hall, Bath Street, at 7.30. (Doors open at 7 p.m.) The first meeting is to be held on November 7th. Full details of this and other meetings appear under “Meeting Notices” in this issue.

Islington Branch are holding a Social and Dance at the Winchester Hotel, Archway Road, Highgate, on Saturday, 27th November. Admission Free. Members are assured of a happy evening.

Nottingham Branch has arranged a series of lectures by London speakers. Full details of current dates under “Meeting Notices.” Good work is being done in the comparatively new branch and the meetings will no doubt meet with success.

Camberwell Branch has consistently held meetings at two outdoor stations, East St., Southwark, and Rushcroft Road, Brixton. The results at East St. (our all the year round meeting place) have varied taken over a long period, owing to opposition meetings ranging from good meetings with Lit. Sales around 8/- and collections of 4/- to small meetings with only three or four Standards sold. Recently signs of a revival were shown when Comrade Gloss, of America, spoke. The audience was large and 8/6 worth of literature was sold. From then on and with the arrival of the Anniversary S.S. things have moved upwards. Our main set-back at this station has been the pre-occupation of the workers with the current problems of British Capitalism.

Our Rushcroft Rd. meeting has maintained a fairly high level of interest, although this is only a summer season station, literature sales average 2/4.

Largely arising from a visit of an Ealing Comrade we started a canvassing drive in June, this year, and we have found this also very worthwhile. It has the advantage of personal contact. Since we began about 20 new readers a month have been found and with fluctuations our present increased readership stands at 85.

The address of the Branch and time of meetings is on the back of this journal. We extend the usual Socialist welcome to all non-members and are always eager to hold discussions on matters of interest to them.

Phyllis Howard

The Task Ahead: Bringing Socialism Nearer (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 50th Anniversary of the founding of our Party is a time for looking back over the years—and forward to the years to come. How will the next half-century compare with the last, and what will it have in store for the Socialist movement? The details, even perhaps the general outline, of how things will work out must largely remain matters for speculation. For our part, we can sum up what we would like to see at any time in one word—Socialism. But a more practical consideration is: how can it be brought about?

We know that the propagation of Socialist ideas must go on, and that these ideas must gain far wider acceptance than they have gained so far. The introduction of Socialism cannot be the work of a few hundred or a few thousand. It must be the work of the overwhelming majority.

At this point it is not uncommon for our critic to remark “so it’s taken you 50 years to get 1,000 Socialists —how long will it take to get 2,000 million?” If he is mathematically minded he may offer his own estimate of the time needed. It cannot, of course, be proved that this estimate is either correct or incorrect. We can only challenge the assumptions on which it is based. If the people we address are favourably disposed towards Socialism they will want to know how to help to bring it about. It is to such readers that this article is directed.

One of the secrets of success in the business of capitalist politics is the promise of immediate delivery of the electoral goods—even though their shoddy quality soon leads to bitter disappointment. So long as there is Capitalism it is always apparently more “practical” to reform it rather than to get rid of it.

When the Socialist advises abstention from supporting any of the parties of Capitalism he is often dismissed as being "unpractical." Yet how much more practical is it to go on asking for slight variations of something you don’t like anyway?

The inevitable disillusion that awaits supporters of all parties that offer to run Capitalism (and promise to solve its problems) paves the way for people to consider Socialism as a real alternative. At first, they may question the possibility of it ever coming, and may voice all kinds of doubts about it—doubts which, in view of the novelty of the idea to them, are understandable. Eventually the answers to our sympathiser's questions are more or less accepted by him. He then reaches the point of thinking “Socialism is the answer all right. But what can be done about it?"

What can a Socialist do to bring into being the world he wants? Why, make other Socialists, of course! Talk to them about it, explain what it means, challenge the prejudices that stand in the way, correct the misunderstandings that confuse the issue. It is not just a case of waiting until someone attacks the S.P.G.B. or Socialism and then jumping to the defence. If, for example, someone says “it’s human nature to fight wars" then he can be given evidence that it is no such thing. All ideas that oppose Socialism must be persistently and strongly challenged, and followed up where possible with a positive Socialist point of view.

The sympathetic newcomer to the S.P.G.B.’s case will probably find that he needs to get more knowledge to back up his arguments. Accordingly he will want to read about various aspects of the Socialist case, and maybe discuss them with others who share his outlook. If his feeling of agreement with Socialism is strong enough he will, in due course, consider applying for membership of the Party.

Think of the ways in which the Socialist movement is handicapped now. Think also of what more Socialists could make possible We need more literature—and in particular a bigger and better Socialist Standard with a larger circulation. Last month it was an enlarged special number, which required much more preparation and much more money than we can usually afford. But with more help we could have a journal of this size every month—or more frequently. We could also publish more much needed pamphlets on various aspects of our case.

There are many other things that need to be done on a larger scale. In addition to actually producing the literature (writing, editing, etc.) it has to be distributed and advertised. The number of public meetings we are able to hold is now limited by our meagre resources. When we launch an electoral campaign its success depends on the amount of work members and sympathisers put into it. And remember that all these are very practical ways of bringing our object nearer.

To our sympathisers we would say this. The Socialist movement will never flourish just on sympathy It needs action—your action. If you agree with most of what we say but are doubtful on some point then let us hear about it. Attend the meetings advertised in this journal, and make contact with your local branch of the Party (see back page). If, for one reason or another, you are unable to make these visits you can always write to us.

Stan Parker

The Age of Sedatives (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 21 years between 1918 and 1939 have been called the Aspirin Age. They were the years of jazz and the flappers’ new morality, of sensation and unemployment, when society first pressed down in earnest upon the accelerator. The years when a world in crises and turmoil turned for comfort to—the little white tablet. A future historian may likewise seek to describe the period since 1945 in terms of the problems and panaceas of the day. He might well consider calling our times the Pheno-barbitone Phase.

“This 20th Century,” said the Medical World of May, 1953, “ is an age of sedation therapy.” About one-tenth of all our prescriptions for drugs are for barbiturates; in addition 10 million aspirin tablets, commonly used as sedatives, are taken in Britain every day. These mountains of drugs are consumed largely in combat with insomnia, which is becoming one of our commonest complaints and as such cannot be disregarded by to-day’s medical investigator. Even the august British Medical Association spent much time at a recent meeting discussing it as a major recognised illness. The day may yet come when a certificate will be signed which gives insomnia as the cause of death. The widely used sedatives have many disadvantages, such as the possibility of raising an annoying skin rash. A more sinister complication is the fatal effect of an overdose, which is sometimes taken whilst the mind is dulled by the drug. We are all familiar with the story of suicide by aspirin, now the Registrar-General reports that barbiturates are responsible for more suicides than any other substance or group of substances. The number of cases of accidental poisoning by these drugs is also increasing.

Sleep is vital

The nature of the apparently elusive thing which we call sleep is uncertain. A popular view sees it as the replacement of expended energy, like the re-charging of a battery. Another opinion, which is gaining support, is that it is a state of inhibition of the senses caused by their over-stimulation during wakefulness. A fair parallel is the donkey which is beaten excessively and so becomes indifferent to the touch of the whip. However, it is a complicated business and best left alone in this article. It is indisputable that sleep is vital to the human being, since it provides the necessary protection from the dangers of exhaustion. Sound sleep is best achieved in the presence of emotional and physical relaxation—any disturbance of it can cause great distress. ,

There are many reasons for sleeplessness, from cold feet to indigestible suppers. But the growth of chronic insomnia and the increase in barbiturate consumption are not to be explained by larger sales of bedtime fish and chips. A Middlesex doctor wrote to the Manchester Guardian of August 5th, 1953 . . . “The root of the trouble which creates the enormous present demand for sleeping draughts . . . is found in men in the increasing strain of their business worries and activities, in their fear of competition, in their apprehension of losing their jobs, in the friction among those working together under high pressure in small offices day after day after arriving there in trains overcrowded to suffocation. I have in 30 years of practice had more than enough occasion to see such cases. . . .  The increasing demand for sedation is a result of the high pressure of modern life and the inability of many people to adapt themselves to it.” That is plain enough, and is a fairly representative opinion.

The Advertisers' Remedies

The cure of sleeplessness presents no problem to the wordy advertiser. “This customer said she suffered from insomnia,” says one advertisement, showing a lady in blissful slumber upon a sharply identifiable mattress. Certain pillows, blankets and bedtime drinks, we are told, have the same desirable effect. Everyone has read the strip cartoon advertisements which suggest that a particular beverage can give us". . .  real, relaxed ” sleep which can “reach down to our subconscious mind” and open the door to success in many a field, from travel-agent to trapeze-artist. (One strip which was rather nearer the mark dealt with the problems of a harassed housewife and mother—her success was managing the kids without flying off the handle.) A subtler approach is offered in America. New York City has the “World's Only Sleep Shop,” a retail establishment which provides for a bottleful of bedtime difficulties. There are firm mattresses and soft mattresses, and some half-firm and half-soft. Dust-free pillows, musical alarm-clocks, anti-snore ear plugs, window silencers and so on. The very latest books about sleep are also on sale, if you should still think that you need them. (In America, incidentally, the yearly consumption of barbiturates reaches the shocking average of 24 tablets for every man, woman and child.) There is one thing which the sleep salesmen never mention. About half of the world’s population sleep—quite soundly—on the earth or a hard mat, with no pillow or one of wood or china and with little or no covering.

The Road to Suicide

This is a world of war and destruction, noise and competition, hydrogen bombs and helicopters, speed and smog, and to live in it we must make unnatural “stop and start” demands on our bodies and nervous systems. These demands are responsible for the rising incidence of nervous disease; each man between the ages of 35 and 65 has to-day as much chance of going at least once into the overcrowded and understaffed mental hospitals as of contracting cancer of the lung, or of being knocked down on the road. And for every patient in the mental hospitals there are thousands outside who are suffering from emotional disorders and who go to their doctor asking for something to calm their nerves or to give them a good night’s rest. The doctor, often himself a victim of modem strain, and with a waiting room probably already overfull, has little time to try to unravel the causes of his patient's trouble. The cure in most cases—a long and thorough rest—is out of the question, for both patient and doctor have a living to earn. So an attempt is made to outwit the symptoms of the illness and the patient leaves the surgery gratefully clutching a prescription for a sleeping draught. Thus a nervous person may start on the road to barbiturate addiction—by far the commonest type of drug addiction—and possibly eventual suicide. For a lengthy use of barbiturates can in itself foster the very conditions—insomnia, depression, anxiety—which it is originally prescribed to cure. For this reason, many doctors try to get away with prescribing a “placebo” which is a “sugar and spice” pill designed to calm the patient in the belief that he is taking an effective drug.

An old, wise man, once said that we always proceed from the simple to the complex and ignore the obvious. The expanding use of sedatives is an example of this. It is an elaborate attempt to shelve a problem which in its bones is quite straightforward. If the tensions of modem capitalism do not relax, the human nervous system will suffer deepening harm. That is the harsh simplicity of the matter. It is worth a little cogitation. Even if it means losing a little more sleep.

Ivan

The Changing Public House (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom drank twelve and a half gallons of beer, statistically speaking. In addition, we disposed of a pint and a half of spirits and a quart of wine each. The only thing to be said in our favour is that our fathers, 60 years ago, drank nearly three times as much on paper and, the child population being larger then, probably four times as much in practice.

Figures are hardly needed to show that people drink less nowadays. A drunk in the street or a man with a grog-blossom is a rare sight; the pubs are empty—not literally, of course, but certainly by comparison with other, quite recent times. The local that was once the Pantheon of the neighbourhood, with knees-up in the bar, a Saturday night overflow on the pavement and a fight now and again, is now a comparatively quiet place where people drop in for a glass and not much more. And in the more newly built suburban areas, pubs generally are few and far between. Today in Britain there is roughly one public house to every 600 people: 50 years ago it was one to 350, and a century ago one to every 100-odd.

It might look as if the two centuries campaign against the horrors of drink has worn resistance down. In fact, there is probably less “temperance’’—the word should mean moderation, but has come to stand for a dogmatic extreme—less temperance today than there was in the 19th century, when its disciples wore blue ribbons and had every child sign the pledge whom they could lay their hands on. Most men and women drink, but not so much and not so often, and they do quite a lot of it at home. Those who visit pubs daily—ask for “the usual” and call the barmaid by her first name—are mainly older men. People under 40 go to pubs, but not as a habit. Their lives have different rhythms. That is what really has happened. Public houses and peoples’ drinking habits have changed: the real change has been in the pattern of social life, to which institutions and attitudes are shaped and fused.

The true significance of the public house is a communal one. Every well-knit community has its centres, places where people of all sorts go to do business, hear news, form opinions and enjoy one another’s company: the market place, the church and, since the Middle Ages in Britain, the inn. There have been and are others, like the coffee-house in the 18th century and the caff in our own generation, but each of them limited to particular social groups (the cafes in fact have a stratification of their own from arty haunts to good pull-ups for carmen). The pub accommodates many groups. Public bar, saloon, private bar and lounge, separate only by wooden partitions, are distinct milieus under the same roof.

The fact of modern counter-attractions to public houses is obvious. Fifty years ago there were no pictures, no radio, no speedways and so on; a good many people nowadays drink bottled beer at home while they watch the television. Something more than mere counter-attraction has caused the decline in public house life, however. It is worth remembering that music halls, the great entertainment at the beginning of the centuty, were also places for drinking. Their successors, the cinemas, have no facilities for it.

A great deal of everyday social activity has taken place in pubs. Workmen ate and were paid in them— farther back, trade unions and friendly societies met in them. Shopkeepers and small businessmen went to private bars for transactions. Less obvious things, too: not so many years ago, housewives took bowls of vegetables into the locals and sat shelling peas or peeling potatoes with glasses of stout beside them. Public houses had their own football teams, with a pitch behind the premises and several hundred habituees to give support (the writer played for one, and a very good team it was). There are not many such teams now, simply because few pubs can raise them from the regulars.

Industrial and political developments have eliminated much of this activity. There usually is a canteen wherever more than a few people are employed, and a wages office as well. The late 19th-century war between the Conservative brewers and the temperance Liberals linked anti-Conservatism with disapproval of drink; the growing Labour movement set up Trades Halls and Committee Rooms, taking the meetings out of the pubs. The small tradesmen, forced into political participation by the near omnipotence of combines and multiple shops, met in Conservative Clubs instead of public houses. Both ways, political parties helped to clear the bars. It is true also that the quality and amenities of everyday life have altered since those days when the pub exuded, to quote Trevelyan, “ its promise of warmth and welcome on to the wet inhospitable street.”

More than anything, however, there has been a falling-off in communal living and thinking. In modern industrial society, any sort of local community is exceptional. Apart from the family, which has disintegrated visibly in this century, and such exceptional cases as racial and political minorities, the only coherent groups are occupational and technical ones; possibly that is why the cafe, the small-group meeting place, flourishes now instead of the pub. The division of labour and the growth of cities where functions must largely be delegated and depersonalized have taken away much of the basis for communal activity. Law and order, education, charitableness, recreation, all are in the hands of professional specialists. The variety of experience that urban civilization apparently offers is too often variety only of vicarious experience. A man who says he is keen on sport nowadays is quite likely to mean that he does the pools or watches all the Arsenal’s home matches.

One of the best literary pictures of the status of the pub in pre-urban communities is contained in George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Marner’s appearance in the “Rainbow” is dramatic because he has never been there before, and so—nothing else is needed—lived in isolation. Discovering the theft of his gold, there is nowhere else to announce it but in the inn. The incident is the real climax of the story, the point where the recluse enters and is accepted by the community, and the inn is its symbol. Nowadays, of course, he would go to the police station.

Certainly some unpleasant things have largely disappeared from social life with the decrease in drinking. Sottishness has not much charm; nor has the sight of children dawdling for hours on public-house doorsteps while their parents are inside. The fading of these unedifying spectacles is usually put down to a change in peoples’ outlook, as if outlook meant a kind of communal revelation. It is true that social attitudes about drinking have changed, but the change is effect, not cause. Given the growth of town life, the diminished need for community centres, and a hundred and one facilities for solving the “problem’’ of leisure, there is less drinking in public houses: consequently there are fewer drunkards and waiting children and, in time, a feeling that there is actually something disgraceful about both. Go to a village where life is still centred in the pub, and you will find the same attitude in reverse—i.e., that the amenities of town life are not just frivolous but wicked too. In this connection, it is worth mentioning that much of the anti-drink propaganda of a century or two ago was directed not against public houses but against gin shops. Hogarth’s “Gin Lane” and “Beer Alley” series, commonly supposed to depict the horrors of drink, in fact aimed to show that beer was better in every way than gin.

The modern public house is more and more a shop where beer is sold, with perhaps some provision for amusement. The only places, apart from rural areas, where it retains something of its former character, are where there is a single industry and so a community is formed by an occupational group—docklands, shipbuilding, mill and mining towns and so on. In those areas the pub has not changed very much, even in its architecture, fittings and compartments—figured glass, rococo partitions, horsehair settees and sporting prints, in contrast with the aseptic, tiles-and-chromium, one- or two-room buildings of the modern metropolis and its suburbs.

Our society is less and less a community, more and more an agglomeration of individuals. Reference has already been made to the handing-over of former communal functions to trained, authority-bearing specialists: the more important point is that responsibility has been handed over too. It is not only that impersonal powers manage, instruct, entertain and generally provide for people—the more vital aspect is that people no longer have much to do in any of those matters. That is why a happening like a flood or a railway disaster makes news by bringing out men and women spontaneously to help, nurse and clothe the victims: ordinarily those are services provided by institutions. The war produced a good deal of such communality and showed that, far from being dead, it is always ready to come through the surface of urban civilization.

The public house is what its name implies—a house for the publicum, the community; and a community is no more to be found in it than a fifty-shilling suit in the Fifty Shilling Tailors’. Is that a bad thing? It is nice to feel superior and think that people nowadays have better things to do than go to pubs; balance the rise of aspirin-taking against the fall of beer-drinking, and you may wonder what the better things are. The pub in itself does not matter very much, but the social circumstances which have changed its character do. Historians of the future will record ours as an era of amenity and progress. Perhaps, too, they will record it as the age of insecurity, personal as well as economic: an age of crowded but lonely people, knowing little communal obligation or sanction for behaviour. Advice bureaux, help pages, marriage guidance councils, huge unseen audiences for the opinions on everything of petty oracles . . .  all these—and the aspirin-bottles—are the true monuments to today.

Robert Barltrop

Marilyn Monroe: A Cultural Phenomena (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Beauty is only skin-deep," wrote the Self-Made Merchant to his son, "but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man." That was sixty years ago, before it became customary to used the hands for describing beauty and when beuty, however deep, kept most of its skin under cover. The reasonable man's pleasure to-day is Marilyn Monroe, and the publishers and booksellers, with their empirical knowledge of his tastes cannot give him enough of her—at second hand, of course.

Reigning beauties of the past, for all that poets have made of them, reigned only in courts and castes. Miss Monroe's sovereignty is practically unlimited, geographically or socially. Not long back, manchester City Councillors averred her to be preferable to one of Henry Moore's sculptures, and a Work of Art: a national columnist went farther and said she was an Act of God. Even the Communists' censoriousness of her as a dollar princess has the scent of sour grapes. Marilyn Monroe, in fact, represents the acme of desirability in this day and age.

Times have changed, of course. This writer once heard an old lady describe how, mounting her bicycle in the eighteen-nineties, she was attacked by a woman who screamed: "You brazen thing! I can see your ankles!" It is not only that people in the 'nineties would have been shocked by Miss Monroe, undissembled in tight or negligible clothing: they would have thought her ugly, too. The beauties of the day—Lily Langtry, Olga Nethersole, La Belle Otero—were strapping girls with all the appearance of good living. Nobody talked of slimming, and the ladies' magazines advertised a treatment called Diano which, if it was all true, was nothing short of an inflationary measure.

The case for eternal beauty becomes as illogical as the argument that there is eternal morality, when one considers the variations in both according to time and place. Metropolitan man may pull faces over the Congo's idea of pulchritude; it is certain that the African native in turn would not think a lot of Marilyn Monroe. It is a question of what you esteem, and that itself is a question of what your world finds necessary. There is an old but appropriate story of a farmer and his guest together gazing across the countryside: the townsman rhapsodizes about the rolling vista, the farmer spits and says, "Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff." Most likely the African, as well as the Eskimo and some others, would say something of the sort about Miss Monroe.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a fair enough statement of fact, but it leaves the important question unanswered. Man is the beholder: what puts, and transforms, beauty in his eye—his mind's eye? In primitive communities it is chiefly physical function, the apparent capacity for child-bearing and hard work. In class-divided societies, beauty has always been seen to a large extent in terms of conspicuous leisure; the sirens of all western civilization seem to have done little else through history but loll on divans (if you believe it, look in the art galleries). And, of course, every age creates its own motives and needs which help to shape its concept of beauty. According to the franker historians, mediaeval ladies often assailed the nostrils as well as the heart, but nobody minded much; nowadays, with a century's public health behind and the soap advertisements before us, a whiff of perspiration kills romance.

Marilyn Monroe is the personification of what popular consciousness in our time deems desirable. The rubato walk is a source of delight; in Victorian England, when no respectable woman thought sex pleasurable, it would have brought an indignant flush to a decent man's face. When the family was sacrosanct (because the economic ties which held it were still fairly strong) sexual provocation was shameful. Now the ties have sagged, the morality has sagged too, and beauty can present itself to arouse the instinctive polygamist in every man. And the conspicuous leisure is still there—in impractical dress as well as the sultriness and aura of wealth.

There is more to Marilyn Monroe than merely physique, however. She is "the sexiest girl in Hollywood," the girl who posed naked for a calendar and takes an interest in Freud. Almost every day there is a fresh tale and a fresh photograph; her skirts blow over her head, she distorts perspective with her callipygous charms. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio was a feast for the papers and everybody's imagination. The husky, virile Joe, a masculine idol, and the supremely nubile Marilyn saying: "You can't take a career to bed and cuddle it," and: "I like honeymoons." Miss Monroe is, in fact, a dream. In Hollywood they make dreams; she is the most delectable dream of all.

The visual promise of pneumatic bliss is only the beginning. The real secret is the legend. Earlier film beauties, the vamps, the sweater girls and the rest, established conventions for exciting without intent to gratify; the Monroe legend is all of intent to gratify. Miss Monroe suggests not merely that she would please you but also that you would please her. From the humbleness-to-riches story, to the fabulous marriage and the scene where a plumber gropes for his pipe-wrench in her bath, the whole is a gorgeous fantasy into which every unsatisfied person of either sex can project every longing. It is Cinderella up-to-date, in glorious technicolour, and they live voluptuously as well as happily ever after.

None of this reflects any particular discredit on Miss Monroe or her employers, the film magnates. People who sell things, even dreams, are simply cashing-in on other people's needs—the only important criticism is of the world which creates such needs on so large a scale. The brevity of Marilyn Monroe's marriage indeed suggests that she herself is no more satisfied than a good many of her admirers. Certainly she knows no greater security—the careers of public entertainers are as precarious as those of any other people.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that, as fast as morality has slackened and so removed apparent obstacles to well-fulfilled sexual lives, the lack of satisfaction has grown. It is impossible to imagine a stable, sane community deifying a dream, but modern culture is largely made up of dreams. There is Miss Monroe; there are the revenge dreams of the brutal gangster stories, the escape dreams of popular romance, the vicarious thrills of speedways, space-fiction and the big fights. Our society, despising primitive people who incorporate sex practices in their cultures, has erected Marilyn Monroe as its tribal symbol—the symbol of frustration and unsatisfied desires.

Robert Barltrop