Running Commentary: Man of Steel (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man of Steel

Is your boss a bastard? Does he refuse to accept anything but the highest standards and does he berate you when you produce, as you often do, less than the best be it engineering, sales or documentation?

If he is, then do not be too hard on him; he may only be doing as he is told. Perhaps he was present at the September meeting of the Steel Industry Management Association when Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of the British Steel Corporation, advised all managers to be “bastards” to any of their workers who turned out sub-standard work.

It may be that Villiers is a sensitive man. BSC is not famous for being a vastly profitable concern and he, as its £30,000 a year head, is often under fire from the press. A little aggressiveness towards his employees, he may have calculated, could do his reputation no harm.

Or perhaps he meant it. Villiers is not just a representative of the capitalist class—he is a member of it. Educated at Eton and Oxford, a member of the exclusive Beefsteak Club (where none of his steel workers would be allowed past the doorman), living in Eaton Square (where none of his steel workers could afford much more than the space for a garden shed) and, before taking over at BSC. chairman of merchant bankers Guinness and Mahon.

Yet his speech was a curious thing. Firstly, what if all workers took him at his word and refused to turn out anything less than the best? What then would happen to capitalist industry, which turns, out mountains of trash when it is trash which pays?

Secondly, what was a member of the capitalist class doing, being so frank about class relationships under capitalism? The idea that we all live in a happy, united society of common interests is hardly best served by such a hard headed attitude.

He who lifts a comer of the truth about these matters will not be popular with the other members of the ruling class. Will Villiers soon be crying all the way to the Eaton Square dole office?

Pym's number one 

Another member of the ruling class to be offering some urging to workers recently—although with a rather different attitude—was Sir Francis Pym and all his friends will hope to see this ambitious politician's keenness rewarded.

Pym also went to Eton, then on to Magdalen College, Cambridge. He belongs to Bucks, the Cavalry and the Guards which are not brands of cigarettes but expensive West End clubs. He has a stately home in Bedfordshire. Clearly, he knows on which side of the bread is the capitalists' caviar.

So it is natural that Pym should be anxious to see the working class, who don’t go to posh schools or join exclusive clubs and who live in council fiats or mortgaged semis, readily accept the cuts in their living standards which the Tory government is so busily planning.

But of course Pym is a gentleman so he does not use coarse language. Instead, he hopes to inspire us all; speaking at the recent Manchester Central by-election, he said he thought we are “. . . fighting another Battle of Britain, only this time it is to the Many that we need to turn."

Politicians often use the trick of persuading workers to accept their lot by referring to former military events which are described —at least in British history books — as triumphs. Harold Macmillan was fond of ruminating tearfully on the agonies of the 1914/18 trenches. Harold Wilson, at a time when he seemed to be convinced that he was Winston Churchill, once urged us all to have a little of the Dunkirk spirit.

Both were playing the same game. Both were making pretty speeches about poverty, which is not pretty and which no worker should willingly accept.

It is likely that Pym was not aware of one very important implication of his speech, when he talked about the Many. It is, in fact, the Many who really matter. He did not appeal to the the capitalist minority to fight another Battle—to look up their shares in the Financial Times more assiduously, to buy extra large estates in the country, to lounge with greater intensity in the tropical sun. He addressed his plea to the majority, to the people who count because they produce everything and who run capitalism from one end to the other. He was talking to the working class.

And the workers, who are on the receiving end of government policy should beware. They should look with complete scepticism on all politicians' blandishments and know that—like Passchendaele, like Dunkirk—there is something nasty in store for them.

China syndrome

It must be very difficult being a supporter of the idea that socialism exists in China, when you get so little help from that country to back you up.

One after another, news from Peking indicates that, far from being a place where the means of production are owned in common, where there are no classes, no money and where there is free access to wealth (not that such a state of affairs is possible in any one part of the world), China is steadily seeking a prominent place among the powers of world capitalism.

Recently, for example, the Chinese government has signed some big trade agreements with the Western capitalist states; symbolic of this has been the normalising of its relations with the United States.

Now comes the news that China is trying to join the International Monetary Fund and in line with this is making what are meant to be reassuring noises to any capitalist thinking of investing in that country.

Chinese Vice Premier Gu Mu said in Peking recently that China is preparing new foreign investment regulations which would make it more attractive to investors. He added that overseas investors need not fear another “cultural revolution”—in other words that there will be political safeguards for such investments.

If China gets into the IMF it will be able to borrow from the World Bank, something it may see as essential if it is to expand its export trade into new areas. This comes as an emphasis to the fact that China is a rising threat to the more established capitalist powers—and may one day assert this threat, like Germany and Japan, by emphatic military means.

It also comes as an embarrassment to those who cling to the unsupportable idea that there is something different in China, something worth working class support, even sacrifice. The facts say otherwise; capitalism exists in China and increasingly makes no bones about it.

Stanley Baldwin: Bluff Squire or Shrewd Politician (1948)

From the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps no politician tried more than the late Earl Baldwin to seem all things to all men. Certainly no other politician more nearly succeeded. That Stanley Baldwin played a role in accordance with ruling-class political requirements is undoubted. That he played it so skilfully was not the least of the services he rendered to his class.

Honest Stan Baldwin was not merely a caption on a Tory election poster. It was a by-word in English politics. For millions he summed up in his stocky person “our traditional native qualities” of bluffness, forthrightness and sturdy independence. He became the idealised representative of that national piece of Action—“The Typical Englishman.” Perhaps in these “native qualities” a little more typical than most of his countrymen. Possibly just a little more “English.” 

To sustain the emotional significance of the "Dictator Myth” the elaborate symbolism of uniformed parades, massed bands, mass rallies, swastika signs and salutes is indispensable. The Baldwin Myth as the representative Englishman of his age was built up around such homely and conventional items as a pipe and pigs.

His propagandists liked to feature him as a simple country gentleman. Because greatness had been thrust upon him, he forsook the rural peace of his Worcestershire orchards and Bewdley pig-yards for the strife and hurly-burly of Westminster politics. His most arcadian setting found him y a rustic gate, pipe in mouth ready at any moment to proclaim glowingly on the rural charms of “This England.”

That the emergence of Industrialism had disinherited the majority of his countrymen from such rural charms he wryly admitted. That the historic emergence of Capitalism had also disinherited the forefathers of the modern working class, from certain immemorial land-rights to “This England” he never stressed. He liked to think that Englishmen had an innate love for “This England.” Tiny garden patches of withered green in grimy industrial towns, or even the desire of their working class dwellers to have such things was for him, equally with the pride and possession of broad acres, part of our imperishable English heritage. He might have regarded the contents of a flower-pot on the window ledge of some industrial tenement as being equally a part of its possessor's ”imperishable English heritage.”

Such was the popular image of this Tory Prime Minister. In our preoccupation with this genial country gentleman we were apt to overlook his industrial associations, his tie-up in iron works, mines, docks, railways; his banking connections. The highlights of the picture of the bluff Worcestershire squire rather faded him out as being also a typical representative of this society’s most advanced economic phase— Finance Capital, and his story of forsaken business interests in the service of the State soft-pedalled the fact that it was in the pursuit and furtherance of such "interests” that he had spent—"The best years of his life.”

At banquets attended by members of the Federation of British Industries, Earl Baldwin liked to add to the glow of the after-dinner port by wistful references to the rare vintage of the good old English past. Those more leisurely days before the coming of mass-production, conveyor belts, merciless speed-ups and consequent nervous breakdowns. Then work was done at a pace natural to man. He also spoke of the more humane industrial relationships in some of the old-established family businesses which had existed. He hoped that one day this more humane spirit would prevail throughout the land. His social perspective seemed, however, as limited as that of a Melbourne or a Peel. He appeared to be blithely unaware of the historic fact that for masses of the working population, his good old English past was but the dawn of a bad new industrial present.

His nostalgic partiality for the past never prevented him from ardently embracing some very modern instances. He was a firm believer in up-to-date productive efficiency. He even welcomed such "newfangled” notions as Industrial Psychology, with its minimising of unnecessary effort on the part of the worker and its maximising of productive output. His age-long and misty affinity with St. George never dimmed his harsh, realistic view of the nature of Capitalist Society. He accepted the development of Monopoly Capitalism. In his "Peace in Industry” plea he said: "The elimination of smaller firms and industries and the appearance of great Capital amalgamations were the driving force of necessity in the protection from competition.” "That was the tendency of industry and nothing could change it.” He also accepted the fact that "the increasing consolidations of Capital into fewer hands was the natural evolution of English industrial life.” "This fact,” he added, "must be accepted. ”

He also regarded an industrial reserve army as normal to Capitalism. To an audience of Birmingham business men in 1925, he repudiated the idea that any government could solve the unemployment problem. He even felt profoundly thankful that the experience of the Labour Government had taught them that they, no more than any other Government could cure this evil. He claimed that "there was no guaranteed remedy to cure this disease and at the same time maintain the international power and position of the British Empire.” Such was the perhaps naturally antithetical make up of the "English Squire” and the great industrial magnate.

Into the texture of the Baldwin Myth there was embroidered an obscure social philosophy. His speeches, vague, sententious, even commonplace, with their strong literary flavour, were masterpieces of a misty, beyond the mountains, idealism. This apotheosis of Baldwin as the true Englishman and his capacity for enshrining a nebulous faith in some eternal harmony and peaceful co-operation of all classes proved an enormous asset to him and his party. From such intangible resources he built up a personal fund of good-will perhaps unequalled by any other capitalist politician. It was this that enabled him to more easily withstand the stresses and strains of antagonistic class interests. Certain acts and political incidents associated with his reign which might have subsequently dislodged a Lloyd George or a Churchill from popularity and power Honest Stan Baldwin successfully rode.

It was once fashionable to depict him politically as a somewhat ingenuous soul. Nothing could have been further from the truth. No politician, not even Disraeli, was more astute in measuring up the political opposition, especially the Labour opposition. Where a Churchill seeks to slay the Labour Party by vituperation Baldwin killed them with "English” kindness. He referred to them constantly as "My Labour friends." Among certain elements there were on occasions “regrettable lapses.’’ He regarded most of them as being like himself, English to the core. Only Marxism was a gospel of hate. And it was not “English.’’ He believed, however, “ no gospel of hate would ever seize the hearts of our people.’’

He regarded the advent of a Labour Government as being no more than the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. He said in 1923, “When the Labour Party come to sit on the Government benches we shall all wish them well in their efforts to govern the country.”

He followed the Disraeli formula of adopting towards the working class an attitude of benevolent paternalism. He advised young Tories to study Disraeli Conservatism. “ With that you can always win,” he said. No less than the Labour Party he claimed to be the champion of the social “under-dog.” He also believed “we were slowly and gradually moving towards a better industrial system.” As the Labour Party also accept ”the inevitability of gradualism ” they would seem to have shared the same social ideal. In progressive social reforms he said his party yielded to none. So he stole the thunder of the “Left.”

He did more than steal the Labour Party’s thunder. He stole their leaders. In 1931, MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas, etc., left the Labour Party to help form the National Government. In the panic “crisis” election of 1931 the Labour Party were also deprived of their own national “heroes.” Bewildered and beaten they stayed in the political desert for many years.

True MacDonald remained Prime Minister. It would be truer to say he went through-the motions of being one. While he postured and jitterbugged in front of the political stage “simple Stan Baldwin” was the puppet-master who pulled the stringy. In 1934 Baldwin took over again. MacDonald became Lord President of the Council and went back stage.

The Labour Party themselves at one period fell heavily for the “Baldwin Myth.” Some even regarded him as a “Socialist.” His sentiments were sometimes as heartily applauded from Labour Party benches as from his own. When Baldwin spoke on the need for a better understanding between classes or Disarmament "even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forebear to cheer.” Some members of the Labour Party regarded him as acting as a kind of buffer between the workers and the hard-faced men of his party. That he was a shrewd and able representative of these hard-faced men, they never suspected.

In 1925 he intimated that wages must come down. In the same year he made his “Peace in Industry plea” ending with “give peace in our time, O Lord.” He, however, saw signs in the same speech of a coming industrial storm. At that time the coal owners were pressing for heavy wage reductions for the miners. Baldwin granted the mine-owners a subsidy to maintain temporarily the status quo and prepared for the coming industrial storm. It took the shape of the General Strike. Millions of workers answered the call in defence of the miners’ standard of living. After nine days the T.U.C. called the strike off. The T.U.C. had, during the strike, been in contact with the then Sir Herbert Samuel who was Chairman of the Baldwin Government’s Mining Commission, and arranged a “Gentleman’s agreement.” Their excuse was that they believed the Government would accept the terms. Sir Herbert Samuel, incidentally, disclaimed any contract with the Government on the matter and pointed out that the meeting with the T.U.C. was entirely on his own initiative. Baldwin himself repudiated any such suggestion and demanded complete surrender. The miners fought on alone. After seven months lock-out by the owners with the backing of the Baldwin Government the miners were beaten to their knees. They were compelled to go back on conditions which made their occupation a virtually sweated industry.

His administration was also responsible for some of the harshest treatment ever meted out to the unemployed. Tightening up of Unemployed Regulations led to the wholesale transference of unemployed to Public Relief. When the numbers of able-bodied people receiving Outdoor Relief reached threatening proportions, heavy cuts were made in the scale of relief. Boards of Guardians who refused to zealously operate the “New Hunger Scales” as they were called, were replaced by Commissioners to see that these new scales were effectively carried out. Later came the notorious Means Test.

There came into being some time after the- first World War, gradually growing in size and intensity, the depressed and devastated areas. In some of the most industrial parts of England grass grew in the streets and men, women and children slowly starved in an atmosphere of decay and despair.

One of Earl Baldwin's favourite themes was the Englishman’s love of his native hearth mid “the sanctity of family life.” Nevertheless* under his administration a wholesale transference of unemployed persons from the distressed areas took place. They were sent to places like London and other parts of the South of England. These places themselves had more than their share of unemployment. Nevertheless the Baldwin Government referred to them as being “relatively prosperous areas.”

Earl Baldwin liked to talk about “Truth” and “ Honour ” in political life. On the need for candour on the part of politicians. He could, however, when necessary sit on the facts with the best of them. When the cynical “behind the scenes” carve up of Abyssinia in the Hoare-Laval pact came out, Hoare was sacrificed to the popular outcry against the secret terms. When Baldwin was pressed for information in Parliament on the matter he blandly remarked “My lips are sealed.”

He professed himself an admirer of the political ideals of Grotius. “ Honest Stan ” could, however, on occasions, indulge in the most Machiavellian expediency, In his successful 1935 General Election he assured the electors that there would be no great armaments. “ I give you my word,” he said, "that there has not been nor will there be any huge increases in armaments or materially increased forces..” Later he confessed that the election was a phoney. He admitted “that the necessity for rearmament existed but he kept his opinions to himself as the pacific temper of the country did not warrant such candour.” His statement that “Democracy must be humoured since it cannot always bear unpleasant truths,” has in the light of the foregoing, sardonic implications.

Another myth of Baldwin was that he stood for disarmament. The facts shatter it. In 1924 British expenditure on armaments was £113 million. In 1937 it was £278 million, nearly two and a half times as much. In the same year, Government plans were announced to spend £1,500 million during the next five years on armaments. His then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, said that such figures were approximations. Expenditure would be indefinitely increased if circumstances warranted it.

His statement in 1934 that “the nation must carry its defensive frontiers to the Rhine” can now be judged in all its ominous and sinister significance. In that year the plant was laid down for the construction of the four-engined Lancaster bombers. He had no illusions about the nature of the coming war. He knew that one of the forms this "British defence” would take would consist of bombing attacks on German towns.

In spite of certain superficial differences as to the best policy for defending British Imperial interests existing between Baldwin and people like Churchill and others, he was no less a ruthless defender of such "interests." As equally committed to re-armament and finally war as they. Such differences were adroitly exploited for purposes of war propaganda. The attack on the so-called appeasement policy served to rouse workers to “our desperate plight.” It became one of the means for emotionally conditioning them to become once again willing, even enthusiastic, victims of a new and greater Armageddon. Baldwin’s stock which had been already in decline, slumped catastrophically. The wheel came full circle. He became in many once-favoured quarters the subject of bitter criticism. even abuse. There were “none so poor to do him reverence.”

But Earl Baldwin is dead! As always on such occasions the atmosphere of the House was heavy with “the odour of sanctity.” Eloquent last tributes were paid by spokesmen of all parties. He became once again, "The great Englishman.”

Mr. Gallacher, M.P., also paid his last respects. As a piece of concentrated sycophancy it would take some beating. It appears that the "English” Baldwin once told him that he had a Welsh father and a Scotch mother. Mr. Gallacher can also claim a Scotch parent on the distaff side. "That,” said Mr. Gallacher, "seemed to create a human bond between us.” On such slender blood-ties was their common humanity finally established. True the Daily Worker (15/12/47) referred to Baldwin as being an enemy of the working class. But it seems that Scotch blood is thicker than working-class water. Mr. Gallacher said, "Nothing should be said that could disturb his peace . . . In the quiet countryside beside his Scotch mother and Welsh father let him sleep in everlasting peace.” While Baldwin may from the Daily Worker's point of view have been an enemy of the working class for Mr. Gallacher he was at least a working-class enemy with a Scotch mother. This would seem for Mr. Gallacher to imply a distinction of some importance.

A pale attempt has been made in certain sections of the Press to see in the demise of Earl Baldwin "The Death of an Hero.” The Daily Telegraph (15/12/47) believed that for him "the trumpets might sound on the other side.” Perhaps a plaque or a bust or even a statue might be a pathetic attempt to ensure his “English” immortality. For posterity however, history will record that his name was writ on water.

Ted Wilmott

Cooking the Books: Cameron’s hindquarters (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month Tory leader David Cameron was in Manchester. His speech-writer reminded him of that city’s past associations:

“Manchester became great in the 19th century when the words ‘Manchester liberalism’ stood for free trade and capitalism. And of course the city inspired another idea – Friedrich Engels lived here for many years and he wrote about the dark side of the industrial revolution”.

Cameron was there to launch what some might regard as a contradiction in terms: the Conservative Co-operative Movement. After saying he thought it was a shame that the co-op movement had been associated with the political left, he explained:

“there have always been people on the centre-right concerned about the effects of capitalism on the social fabric. Men like Carlyle and Disraeli, following the tradition of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith himself, who recognised at the outset of the industrial revolution that profit was not the only organising principle of a healthy society” (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7084865.stm).

He also repudiated one of Thatcher’s most notorious sayings by admitting that “there is such a thing as society – it’s just not the same thing as the state”.

The free-marketers at the Adam Smith Institute must be cringing and “to the right of Genghis Khan” might be a more accurate description of the views of Thomas Carlyle than “centre right”.

Carlyle (who invented the term “the cash nexus” to describe how capitalism was reducing the relations between people to money ones) and Disraeli (who wrote a novel about there being “two nations” in England) were prominent members in the 1840s of a group of Tories who called themselves “Young England”. Engels did not just write about the dark side of the industrial revolution. He also wrote about “Young England”, in the Communist Manifesto he drafted with Marx:

“Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society . . . In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe. . . The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French Legitimists and ‘Young England’ exhibited this spectacle”.

No doubt, as a Tory Toff who went to Eton, there will be a feudal coat of arms somewhere on Cameron’s hindquarters, but much more prominently displayed will be the words “Opportunist Professional Politician” – which workers should equally greet with loud and irreverent laughter.

Not what he seemed (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harold Macmillan, who was also known as Supermac, or the Great Unflappable, or Lord Stockton, was said to be a complex character. Nothing is more beloved of political biographers; the simple characters, like the workers who allow themselves to be dazzled by a politician's reputation, never become famous, in life or death. Macmillan's role — ascribed to him partly by himself and partly by those who observed him — was one which he acted out almost to the end. Near death, he made his frail way to the House of Lords to depict Thatcherite capitalism in a style startling for its audacious affectations. He grabbed the headlines by telling us that the striking miners were the men who had beaten the Kaiser (Macmillan seemed to suffer a recurring difficulty in separating workers on the picket lines from those in the First World War trenches. He once negotiated his way out of a rail strike with tearful reminiscences of Passchendaele. Were the union leaders really simple enough to be impressed by such outrageous waffle?) At the time of that speech, the miners were engaged in a bitter struggle, not against some foreign power but in an effort to fend off the policies of the British ruling class. They were not able to do to Ian MacGregor what Macmillan thought they had done to the Kaiser. Another of his famous recent statements was his protest that the Tory plans to privatise nationalised industries amounted to selling off the family silver (of course, as a Conservative himself Macmillan should have been opposed to nationalisation in the first place) Workers who don't have any silver in the family, who perhaps rely for their houseware on collecting enough tokens at petrol stations, might have wondered what it matters if the industries where they work — where they are exploited — change hands.

Of course Macmillan's cosy and reassuring style did not match with reality. The England he casually depicted did not exist and never has existed. There was never a time when the two classes of capitalism amicably co-operated to guard a joint interest. There never was — never could be a joint interest, although it suits the purpose of people like Macmillan to pretend that there is. The two classes have always been, and must always be. in opposition to each other. Politicians try to hide the fact — Tebbit does it by prompting us to buy shares in state industries. Wilson did it through enthusiastic visions of capitalist prosperity through automated industry. Macmillan did it by treating us like the cared-for tenants of some benign country squire. However they try it, it amounts to the same thing — an attempt to deceive us into supporting a social system which by any humane or reasonable standards is unsupportable.

Macmillan replaced Anthony Eden as Prime Minister in February 1957, after the debacle of the Suez invasion, which is not one of the Tories' proudest memories. The nationalisation of the Suez Canal, by the Egyptian government under Nasser, was one of a series of steps in the decline of British power and influence in the Middle East. For Eden it was a sticking point; according to recently released Cabinet papers he was determined to use force (by which he meant ordering British workers to fight and die there) to overthrow Nasser and as the crisis developed, and with it Eden's painful and exhausting illness, the matter became a feverish obsession with him. The more hysterical newspapers wallowed in it; for them it was another case of Good (Eden) standing up to Evil (Nasser). The Egyptian government. led by a greedy maniac, were devious, grasping and untrustworthy while the British, led by an elegant Old Etonian, were frank, generous and utterly honourable.

It is no unusual thing for hysterical patriotism to swamp the truth, which in this case was that whole episode was based on a secret conspiracy between the British, French and Israeli governments. Eden sent his Foreign Secretary uncomplaining, pliable Selwyn Lloyd to France to work out a deal under which the Israelis would attack Egypt and so give the British and French a pretext for intervention on the grounds that they were defending the Canal as an international waterway. At the time, these honourable gentlemen of England denied that there was any conspiracy, or even collusion; they lied to the House of Commons and, according to the Guardian of 30 October 1986, Eden personally saw to it that the English version of the agreement which Selwyn Lloyd brought back was destroyed. But the facts were never in doubt. Some prominent Tories, like Minister of Defence Walter Monckton, made their opposition plain while others, like R. A. Butler, did so more discreetly. Macmillan was one of the hawks; perhaps he saw his chance for the future. He favoured, not just occupying the Canal but ". . . to seek out and destroy Nasser's armies and overthrow his government'' (The Times 1 January 1987) which, he argued, would deal with ". . . the whole problem of pacification (sic) of the

Middle East" (Macmillan, Riding The Storm).

It was that stand, more than anything, which ensured Macmillan's succession of Eden, for it offered the beleaguered Tories the hope that the distress and embarrassment of Suez would be wiped away and, perhaps, a new age of glorious British imperialism ushered in. Of Butler, the only other serious contender:

  There is no doubt that his attitude over Suez depreciated Butler's standing both in the Cabinet and in the Parliamentary Party. This was particularly true of the so-called Suez group, who criticised his assumed opposition to the military intervention in Egypt and his reputedly lukewarm support of action after it had been taken. (Nigel Fisher, The Tory Leaders).

In fact. Macmillan's support for the war was anything but consistent. At first he vowed that as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was prepared to pawn every picture in the National Gallery to pay for it but when the financial stress of the invasion became plain he abruptly changed his attitude and threatened to resign if there was not an immediate cease-fire. Macmillan himself described the affair in less than candid terms:

  It has been stated that as Chancellor of the Exchequer I made an urgent plea that we should submit to circumstances and acknowledge our virtual defeat. I have often been reproached for having been at the same time one of the most keen supporters of strong action in the Middle East and one of the most rapid to withdraw when that policy met a serious check. "First in. first out" was to be the elegant expression of one of my chief Labour critics on many subsequent occasions. (Riding The Storm).

But of this shrewd, cynical manipulation the Tories remembered only as much as they found comforting. Macmillan had done enough to convince them that he was the leader to unite them and to revive the imperialist traditions of British capitalism. He was, after all, another Old Etonian, he had been to one of the smarter Oxford colleges and an officer in the Guards. "An overwhelming majority of Cabinet Ministers was in favour of Macmillan as Eden's successor, and back-bench opinion . . . strongly endorsed this view" (Lord Kilmuir, the Lord Chancellor, Political Adventure).

These hopes were soon disappointed, as Macmillan presided over the dismantling of much of what remained of the old British Empire. In Africa and the Middle East, in one state after another, the British ruling class had waged a long campaign against nationalist guerillas. They might have carried on in this way for a very long time — indeed one Colonial Secretary was stupid enough to declare that Cyprus, where one of the bitterest campaigns was being fought, would "never” throw off British rule. Macmillan had to face the reality that in the post-1945 world British capitalism could not undertake another Boer War. In addition the American capitalist class had long been working to end the system of Commonwealth Preference, which obstructed their access to valuable markets and sources of raw materials. When the British government signalled their defeat in Cyprus by allowing the exiled leader Makarios to return from exile, the Tories' arch imperialist, Lord Salisbury, had come to his sticking point and he resigned in protest. Macmillan seemed unperturbed: ". . . he had chosen an issue on which no strong public opinion would be aroused . . ." The Tories were bewildered that this man of such impeccable background should behave like any other politician, with actions which contradicted what he allowed them to think of as his principles.

It was his nonchalance in such situations which gave Macmillan the reputation for being unflappable; "father of the nation" he was called by David Steel when he died. Perhaps his most audacious claim, in 1957, was that ". . . most of our people have never had it so good," — were living in ". . . a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime nor indeed ever in the history of this country". At the time many workers had not adjusted to the wider ownership of cars, to watching television and using appliances like washing machines. Viewed through a car windscreen, capitalism to them had changed its nature to a sort of hire purchase debt which stretched into infinity. A simpler and more useful analysis of that time was that capitalism was in boom, not just in Britain but throughout the world. At such times workers are liable to look back on the slumps of the past and draw the wrong conclusion — that they are living at a time when many of capitalisms basic problems have been solved.

In fact, Macmillan's speech was a warning of possible recession to come and when it did come, in the early 1960s, and his government ran into a trough of unpopularity, his nonchalance deserted him. The hysteria which demanded a fight to the finish with Nasser was turned onto his own Cabinet and in July 1962 he sacked a third of them including his Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd ("so good and so loyal" Macmillan had written of Lloyd in 1958) who. as might be expected of one who would obviously do anything for British capitalism, went quietly and loyally. Macmillan's last mistake as Premier was to support Alec Douglas-Home as his successor, which helped the Labour Party's propaganda that, at a time when British capitalism needed to join the white-hot technological age, the Tories remained steeped in aristocratic complacency. One way and another, Macmillan must have driven numbers of people into support of the Labour Party and so helped Wilson's victories in 1964 and 1966. One of the last of his many insults to the working class was the choice of Stockton as his title when he went to the House of Lords for this town, noted for its chronic, grinding poverty, could not happily be linked with a capitalist in affluent retirement in a huge stately home in Sussex.

Macmillan's exterior was that of the charming, sincere amateur but behind it he was a ruthlessly ambitious politician. His advance to the Premiership was no accident and neither was his languid vision of an England where, as he put it after his 1959 election victory, "the class war is obsolete" — where the grimy, impoverished factory worker cares for the landed aristocrat, and vice versa, because each knows their place. He was said to have been savaged in mind as well as in body by his terrible experiences in the trenches but this did not prevent him supporting other, equally horrifying, wars. His protests against the ghastly suffering in Stockton-on-Tees would have been more impressive had he not been a member of a party standing so blatantly for the social system which produces such problems. One of his claims to fame was that, as Minister of Housing after the 1951 election, he was responsible for over 300,000 working class homes being built in a year. But in many cases the standards of design and construction were as gimmicky as a Premium Bond. Now, even the planners concede that the estates built at that time were a terrible mistake — for the people who have had to survive in those arrogantly conceived, badly designed, jerry-built deserts, not for the man in his stately home in Sussex who won popularity through them.

How do we assess Macmillan? When he became MP for Stockton unemployment there stood at 29 per cent. In the 1980s, as he approached the end of his life, it stood at 28 per cent. Capitalism has been through its cycles, of boom and slump, war and "peace" and has not changed in any significant way. It is an apt comment on the futility of his life, and on the lives of all the other apologists for capitalism and most of all on the political ignorance of the patient, vulnerable people who keep them in power.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: All in what together? (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Such is the glut of material it is not necessary to drill too deeply into political history to excavate an impressive sample of pledges, slogans, phrases deposited by our leaders which they came to regret. For example during the devastating slump of the 1930s a few million unemployed who had returned from the war bitterly questioned the meaning of Lloyd George and his “Land Fit For Heroes”. In the 1960s there was Harold Macmillan dreamily talking of a time when a customarily struggling people “never had it so good”. Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan never lived down “Crisis? What Crisis?” when he was asked, as he returned from an economic summit in the West Indies in 1979, about his plans to deal with British capitalism’s turmoil. The fact that he did not say this (it was no more than a reporters’ version of what he had said) did not lessen the impression of a flippant dismissal of a serious problem and led to the loss of Labour votes. And recently, as the present recession (of a kind widely assumed by the economic experts to be a thing of the past) rumbled into its stride, David Cameron attempted to rally us with the assurance that: “We are all in this together”.

Ancestry

What right has Cameron to speak to us in this way? Well, in this social system with its historically characteristic class structure there is all he needs to give him that right. His background is rich in antecedent; through his paternal grandmother he is a direct, if illegitimate, descendant of King William IV and, through tortuous lineage, a fifth cousin of the present queen Elizabeth. Apart from being blue-blooded, he is (possibly to his own relief) a son of a family with a long and lucrative history of high standing in banking and trade. His late father benefited from a family tradition of being a senior partner in one of London’s richest, most powerful stockbrokers. If this is not enough to secure his superior place in the social hierarchy, Cameron is married to a step-daughter of Viscountess Astor who, apart from being a descendant of Charles II was the owner and designer of an exclusive jewellery business and is now the CEO of a home furnishing design company. In other words, Cameron has all he needs to assert his place in the class structure of capitalism, which encourages him to lay down the laws governing our lives in the interests of his class. And which includes swamping us with repression and manipulation, at times denying the reality of it all with specious claims to have common interests with us. This is, put simply, another aspect of the class struggle.

Divided

David Cameron can be relied on to tell us every now and again that he is “passionate” about all sorts of plans, chances and prospects. So we might ask how he judges his government’s response to his widely publicised call for national unity to deal with the recession – as we are all in the mess together. There are many examples in opposition to this, of an emphasis on people being officially divided between hard workers and dole-scroungers, between genuine invalids and fraudulent incapacity benefit claimants. Some time ago we had to endure government spokespeople relating how “decent, hard-working” people can be seen at five o’clock in the morning trekking to work through dark and silent streets where, behind curtains, benefit fraudsters slept blissfully on. We heard about Boris Johnson complaining that in a sandwich bar he is often served by someone from abroad – because the English are too lazy to compete with diligent foreign workers for such jobs. And a particular victim of this kind of demonising has been, and is increasingly, the disabled.

Disabled

In this cause, the gutter media have joyfully joined the campaign to support the government propaganda that the benefits system is being bankrupted, publishing photographs of incapacity benefit claimants refereeing football games or running in races. This has stimulated an upsurge in discrimination – sometimes abuse or violence – against disabled people commonly assumed to be cheating for their benefits. Charities like Scope, Mencap, Leonard Cheshire, Royal National Institute for the Blind, report regularly receiving calls about this and believe it to be officially encouraged. The head of campaigns at the National Autistic Society has stated that The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) where Iain Duncan Smith is secretary “is certainly guilty of helping to drive this media narrative around benefits, portraying those who receive benefits as work-shy scroungers or abusing the system that’s really easy to cheat”. The Head of Policy at the Disability Alliance said his organisation is hearing of higher levels of verbal abuse: “It seems to be growing as a result of a misperception of much more widespread abuse of benefits than actually exists. That’s being fed by the DWP in their attempts to justify massive reductions in welfare expenditure.” (The intention is to reduce total Disabled Living Allowance payments by 20 per cent by 2015/6.)

So what does Cameron think about his call for unity being used to divide people? That catchphrase of his has passed with the others into a disreputable history, leaving us with two questions. What is the “it” which we are urged to be “in”? And do we want to be there with him? Do we want a society typified by people existing, in this country apart from elsewhere, in such peril that a cut in state benefit reduces them to desperation, needing to choose between buying food and heating their home? Are we impressed by politicians’ transparent efforts to justify this? There is a simple answer: we can do better and as a start we can expose the likes of Cameron and their insidious defence of the indefensible.

Ivan

Rifts in the Tory Party (1981)

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

From the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to the Cabinet meeting on 17 June the press, TV and radio worked up a lot of sound and fury about the impending great battle between the hard-line “drys”—Thatcher’s supporters—and the soft-line “wets” seeking to force changes of policy. The media spokesmen had many explanations of what the battle was about and what the outcome would be. And when it was over they offered a wide choice of verdicts, ranging from the official one that there wasn’t any battle, to reports that the rebels had been out manoeuvred. They were all agreed that the chief leader of revolt was Peter Walker, Minister of Agriculture, who only a week later publicly voiced his criticisms. “Without sending Mrs Thatcher an advance copy of his speech. Mr. Peter Walker, one of the leading ‘wets’ in the Cabinet, yesterday argued forcefully against the Government's rigid stand on monetarism when he addressed the British-American Chamber of Commerce in New York”. (The Times 23 June).

One interpretation is that Walker. who had backed Ted Heath against Thatcher when she was elected Tory Leader, has the ambition to take her place. In any event he never did agree with her “monetarist” policy. When, in the late seventies, the majority of Tories threw overboard the Keynesian nonsense as a cure-all for capitalism and adopted in its place the “monetarist” nonsense. Walker (like Heath and some others) remained an unrepentant follower of Keynes: it was he who described his party as the party of Keynes and Disraeli. (He shares his continued devotion to Keynesian doctrine with the various wings of the Labour Party, the Liberals and the TUC).

What brought about the conversion to “monetarism” was the course taken by unemployment. In 1944 the Tories, the Labour Party and the Liberals, all represented in the war-time coalition government, issued an agreed document based on the belief that Keynes was the answer to capitalism's problems and in particular that such policies would guarantee “full employment”.

For a decade unemployment did remain very low, both under the Labour Government (1945-1951) and under the following Tory Government. (From 1945 to 1957 it averaged under 400,000). So it was possible for Harold Wilson to claim in 1957 that “all major parties” (Tory, Labour and Liberal) were still committed Keynesians. But since then unemployment has risen to continually higher peaks: to a million under Heath’s government (1970-1974), to over 1,600,000 under Labour (1974-1979) and now to over 2½ million. The Thatcher wing of the Tory leadership concluded that the old agreed policy was wrong and they fought, and won, the May 1979 General Election on the new “monetarist” policy.

In practice the Keynesians believe that, by increasing government expenditure, unemployment can always be kept at a low level. The new, Thatcher, policy reversed this and aimed to reduce government expenditure, government borrowing and the level of taxation, and by so doing curb inflation and reduce unemployment.

Although the Tories do not mention it, their policy is in essence the one recommended by Harold Wilson in 1957 and which he said would be adopted by a Labour government to deal with inflation.

  In inflationary times . . . all are agreed in theory on the need for public saving through a large Budget surplus . . . 

and

  we should not hesitate to use monetary controls ruthlessly if necessary, as one in an armoury of weapons.

But after more than two years in office the Thatcher government has done none of the things it promised. Instead of going down government expenditure, government borrowing and the level of taxation have all gone up, one reason being the enormous cost of paying benefit to an added 1¼ million unemployed. The Tory leaders are now fearful that unemployment will go on rising and cause them to lose the next election, and the Walker rebels no doubt see the possibility that the Tories will, before then, go back to Keynes, and perhaps unseat Thatcher as party leader.

The truth is that capitalism’s periodic swings into depression and heavy unemployment take place no matter what policy the government follows. Apart from rigging the unemployment figures or subsidising employers to keep unemployed workers on the pay roll, there is almost nothing governments can do about it except wait for the depression to pass. But professional politicians, whether they believe it or not, have to pretend to the electors that their government can and will provide full employment: which means that they have to ignore the evidence.

A case in point is the claim by Foot, Healey and Bonn that Labour Government means low unemployment, indeed “jobs for all”. Here are the facts. Since June 1929 there have been four periods of Labour government, totalling nearly twenty years. In every one of those four periods unemployment has been higher when Labour left office than when it went in. In the first period (1929-1931) it went up by 1,600,000, and in the last period (1974-1979) it more than doubled, from 636,000 to nearly 1,300,000.

In the past the Tories have been luckier, with their electoral victories coming at a time when depression was passing, but they are now faced with the prospect that recovery from the present depression will not take place in time for the next election, in or before May 1984.

Another big electoral issued involved in the Thatcher adoption of monetarism is that of inflation. Unlike unemployment, about which governments can do nothing, inflation—the rise of prices caused by an excess issue of inconvertible paper money—is entirely under government control. This was shown, for example, by the Lloyd George government when, in, December 1919, it decided on a policy of deflation. By reducing the notes in circulation it not only halted the price rise but brought about a drastic fall in prices.

In May 1979 the Thatcher Government declared its intention of curbing inflation and eventually stopping it entirely by means of “monetarism”. It is worth recalling that when in 1944 the three parties adopted Keynes, they too promised “a more or less stable price level”. The reality has been that prices are now more than ten times what they were in 1945, and Thatcher’s new policy has proved just as useless to curb inflation. In her two years of office prices have gone up by 36 per cent and are still rising.

It must be emphasised that the use by the “monetarists” of the term “controlling the money supply” does not mean that they accept Marx’s explanation of inflation or are repeating the deflation policy of the 1919 government. They explicitly repudiate the theory that an excess issue of paper money raises prices, and since May 1979 the Thatcher government has increased the excess of notes in circulation by a further £1300 million. And it is a delusion that the presence or absence of inflation makes any difference to capitalism’s periodic depressions and high unemployment.

Two other issues that were alleged to have been fought over in the Tory Cabinet were the foreign exchange rate of the pound, and the grant of further large sums to the nationalised Coal Industry and British Rail. Some commentators presented these issues in terms of the supposed preference of the whole body of business men for a low pound exchange rate, and their hostility to nationalisation. This superficial view overlooks that each company is concerned with its own profits and survival, and capitalist interests accordingly are divided. Companies heavily involved with exports or which receive profits from investments abroad gain by a low pound exchange rate, while importing companies gain by a high rate. Thus companies engaged in supplying plant and machinery to the coal industry or for railway electrification, were delighted with the government decision to make further grants to the Coal Board and British Rail.

Like all Cabinets, whether Tory or Labour, occupied as they are with handling the problems capitalism continually throws up, the Thatcher Cabinet will go on being divided by the infighting of ambitious politicians promoting their careers.

Edgar Hardcastle

Running Commentary: If Thatcher goes (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Thatcher goes

It may take some time to accustom ourselves to the idea that Michael Heseltine wants to take care of us all — to protect the weak, the sick and the poor — but that is what we may have to face, if Margaret Thatcher should cease to be Tory leader. If it comes to that, not so long ago it would have been difficult to accustom ourselves to the idea of Thatcher losing her grip but now, as the Westland affair swells from a cloud no bigger than an ex-Defence Secretary's hand to a darkness stretching to the far horizon, the unthinkable becomes readily believable.

The opposition to Thatcher within her party is. we are told, to do with her style of government— her ruthless and overbearing pursuit of her ends and her preference for a cabinet full of unquestioning toadies rather than suffer a single stimulating critic. This has left her back benches crowded with what is called ministerial talent who were not however talented enough to prevent themselves being quietly snuffed out or to remember that Thatcher's adopted style was what once, in those heady days after the 1979 and 1983 elections, endeared her to the party.

How gleefully, for example, they all once grasped at the Russian award of that title of the Iron Lady; how approvingly they regarded her forays into EEC negotiations, showing those nasty foreigners that they could not pull the financial wool over her steely eyes; how gratefully they applauded her implacability over the Falklands war: how rapturously they laughed when she scornfully denied to a Tory conference that she wanted to be another Edward Heath: "This lady's not for turning".

If the Tories are deserting her now. this can be for only one reason. Exposed as no different from the rest, as a cynical and deceitful politician whose principles are those of day-to-day opportunism. Thatcher suddenly looks like a disaster. There is panic in the Tory ranks; how else can we explain Heseltine's audacious claim to be a compassionate politician?

And if Thatcher goes, what then? Will she be replaced by a Tory government pledged to introduce the politics of One Nation? Will the Tory wets come squelching back into the cabinet? Will British capitalism become managed by a bunch of landed gentlemen from the shires — Pym, Gilmour, Prior — rather than upstart advertising executives and small business people? Will all of this be bolstered by the sulking Ted Heath and by Willie Whitelaw, desperately plugging the holes in the dykes of party unity?

Such a government would be presented to us as offering new hope for a more humane and secure future. There would be whispers about reducing unemployment, reviving the National Health Service, smoothing the rougher edges of the deepest poverty. It might be a propitious time to overlook the fact that these leaders are already associated with wretched failure, in the governments of Heath, Douglas-Home and Macmillan. There is no reason to believe that they will be any more successful in the future.

One Nation is in any case not an exclusively Conservative idea. Every Labour government comes to power with the same sort of promise, to unite the interests of everyone into a great drive for competitive British exports, full employment, a controlled economy, efficient state services and so on. They may call their policies by different names the National Plan, the Social Contract but essentially they are the same as One Nation and they suffer from the same basic fallacy.

Capitalism is not a society of unity. It is based on class ownership of the means of life and therefore on class conflict. It cannot be controlled or moulded by politicians or economic experts into something which it is not. It cannot operate in the interests of the majority of its people. It must continue as a system of anarchy, poverty, disease and war.

All of that is taught to us by experience and by an analysis of capitalism. Unless the working class act to abolish capitalism, the prospect is dismal — a succession of ineffective governments distinguishable only by their style of empty promises and of the excuses they give for their impotence. We have had time enough to accustom ourselves to that idea — and time to act on what we have learned from it.


Policeman’s brawl

The role of the police is primarily one of institutional coercion on behalf of ruling-class power. Anything else — helping old ladies across the road, for example — is entirely incidental. This being the case, it is plain to see that activities such as we have witnessed on. say, the miners' picket lines, or at Grunwick, are not in any way exceptional but rather conform to the normal expectations of the class that recruits and pays the police. In exchange for these relatively lucrative services the police in turn can normally expect to be shielded from prosecution or conviction should their activities kill or maim. The cases of Jimmy Kelly and Blair Peach are only two of the many instances where this has proved true.

So what about the latest example of protection from the consequences of brutal thuggery for which, in the knee-jerk terms of the Director of Public Prosecutions, there exists insufficient evidence on which to prefer charges? We refer, of course, to the vanload of policemen looking for a punch-up in Holloway who gratuitously attacked five boys, two of whom — the black ones, significantly enough — ended up in hospital.

On this topic, somewhat surprisingly, the Guardian has managed to serve up something a little less bland than its usual jesuitic fare. Its second leader of 5 February. "Police beyond the law", contains much that is unquestionably accurate, including the clear recognition that the government is protecting the police. Of course it is. But what sticks in the Guardian's craw is any nasty revolutionary notion that such partisanship is class-based. The inescapable truth is that capitalism's police, "right" or "wrong", have a bounden duty to close ranks in tribal complicity on behalf of their and our masters.


Kick start

In the month that saw politicians stabbing each other in the back and rival groups of capitalists fighting it out for a share in Westland helicopters, life for the working class went on pretty much as usual.

The number of people registered as unemployed rose to 3.4 million. Shortly before the figures were announced, the Job Start scheme was launched by the government. This is the latest attempt at cosmetic surgery to conceal capitalism's failure to provide people with employment and hence the means to live. It is to be run in nine key areas (not necessarily those with the highest unemployment) and involves unemployed workers being offered £20 a week to "top up" their wages if they take a job which pays less than £80 a week. In other words, the government is subsidising bosses who pay low wages. The rationale is that the long term unemployed lose confidence and need encouragement to go back to work. Of course what they are really worried about is that unemployed workers who realise that they will only be a few pounds a week better off by taking a job that pays very little may decide not to bother. But having bribed workers to take on low paid work with the extra £20. the government will withdraw the grant after six months.

Capitalism depends on workers selling their labour power for the lowest wage or salary that employers can get away with paying. Workers are educated, trained and conditioned into believing that wage slavery is freely entered into and necessary to human dignity: to work for a living, no matter how badly paid the job, is better than "living off the state". But if workers see through this myth and decide that it is not worth going to work for a few pounds more than they can get in benefits, then the state has a variety of ways of coercing people into going to work for low wages. YOPS and YTS schemes have been used to try to instil the work ethic into young unemployed people and now Job Start is to be used for the same purpose with older unemployed workers.

Political Notes: Norman's Defeat (1981)

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

Norman’s defeat

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

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

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

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

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


Roy Jenkins

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

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

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

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

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


Postman’s knock

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

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

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

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

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

Greasy Pole: How Do You Like Your Leaders? (2017)

A Face in the Crowd.

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was a crowd scene which absorbed half an inner page of that popular national newspaper. A split-second record of the Wilderness Festival, a musical event near the Oxfordshire village of Charlbury. And whose was that particular face, shimmering and unsmiling and well groomed among the hair and the beards, gazing across to his left at a woman dressed expensively and fashionably absorbed in the performers?

Cameron

He is resident locally in a grandly assertive house (Wilderness is unusual for being an expensive event in the world of pop music). And he is David Cameron, so recently the ex-Etonian Honourable Member of Parliament for the local constituency of Witney and then Her Majesty’s Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. His presence that day at the Wilderness was an example of his attempts to justify his assurances that he is one of us so that we would all share in the prosperity which he would bring into our lives. For example immediately after his victory in the 2015 election, which swept away that cumbersome Coalition with Nick Clegg and his LibDems, Cameron spoke to us all from the open air in Downing Street  

   ‘I truly believe we are on the brink of something special in our country; we can make Britain a place where a good life is in reach for everyone who is willing to work and do the right thing . . . As we conduct this vital work we must ensure that we bring our country together . . . we will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom. That means ensuring this recovery reaches all parts of our country, from north to south, from east to west’. 

These brave words did not act as one of those historic pledges because soon afterwards Cameron was swept from his post as Prime Minister by the power-ravenous Theresa May taking full advantage of the result of the EU referendum which in many cases persuaded voters in the more impoverished constituencies to express their anxieties and frustration by opting for Brexit.

Poor Kids

For example a report from the Child Poverty Action Group gave an idea of what had actually happened to child poverty, which Cameron was promising to eliminate, during his time as Prime Minister: In the UK in 2014-5 there were 3.9 million children – 28 percent – living in  poverty. Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. Two-thirds (66 per cent} of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works . . . Child poverty blights childhoods. In addition the Institute of Fiscal Studies has stated that child poverty will rise by 400,000 overall during 2020: ‘Ministers have to face up to the reality that we’re on course for the biggest rise in child poverty in a generation’.  

In the event Cameron did not have to face up to whether this forecast was accurate -- and what he might offer as a remedy for the problem -- by the simple ruse of reacting to the result of the EU referendum by throwing up his much-prized job as Prime Minister. Pretty soon afterwards he also resigned from being an MP, which left him even more freedom from chasing through any promises about solving some social problems while making an appearance at events like the Wilderness.

His successor had run a lengthy, subtle campaign to win the top job herself so that when the day came she could reflect on the procession of defeated opponents with her own version of the same style of promises we had grown to expect from Cameron. She could even spell out her thoughts in the open, on that very same doorstep before that same shiny black door: 

  ‘The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls we will think not of the powerful but of you. When we pass new laws we will listen not to the mighty but to you’.

Baldwin

Those words can be interpreted as May’s salute to one of her predecessors who came into Ten Downing Street in the nineteen twenties. Stanley Baldwin was the Conservative MP for Bewdley in Worcestershire from 1908 until May 1937. During that time he was three times Prime Minster, from 1923 until 1937. He came from a wealthy family who owned Baldwins Ltd – a huge complexity of coal, iron and steel work in Bewdley. His time in government was marked by some crises in national and international events, such as the General Strike, the abdication of Edward VIII and the widespread unemployment during the slump of the Thirties. Abroad there was the rise of dictatorships in Italy and Germany and the outbreak of war in 1939. During all this time Baldwin displayed a ruthless manipulative style in managing British capitalism and its appendages, which earned him a varying reputation. He originated some enduring descriptions of some of the people he dealt with; for example there were the press barons Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook and their enjoyment of ‘power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’ and his sketch of his party in 1918 as ‘a lot of hard-faced men who look as if they have done very well out of the war’. On the other side there was Winston Churchill telling us that ‘I wish Baldwin no ill but it would have been much better had he never lived’. The mixed feelings about Baldwin were expressed in the delay to raise a typical monument to him after his death in 1947, apart from a blue plaque in Westminster and a stone seat beside a minor road at The Burf Worcestershire. But recently there has been a successful scheme to produce a life size bronze statue for display in Bewdley Guildhall. A keen supporter of this was Theresa May who declared to the organisers ‘Stanley Baldwin should be recognised as one of the most significant figures of twentieth-century British politics. It was he who coined the phrase ‘One Nation’ to describe that fundamental aspect of the Conservative approach to politics’. So the statue was made and stands now for everyone to see and admire. Perhaps at the same time they will also reflect on the extravagant wealth personified by Baldwin and his class.

Ivan.

Tories back to nature (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Devotees of political stereotypes will be comforted that the Conservative Party seems to be back to its old self again, after all those years when it clumsily posed as the working class's friend, as the party which cares, as the party of freedom and prosperity. All that is over now; one Tory at this year's conference symbolised it when he asked about one of the wetter junior ministers: “What’s a man who rides bicycles, drinks beer and sends his children to comprehensive school doing in the Conservative Party?

During the years between the wars (the two World Wars that is; for our present purposes we are ignoring the others which have cost so much in suffering and destruction) Stanley Baldwin, although he did not ride a bike, managed to deceive a lot of people that there was something called the National Interest, in which everyone's fortunes were involved and which they should trust him to protect. Baldwin was a rich man whose money came from the family ironworks. He spent some of it on a comfortable home in the lush acres of Worcestershire where he acted the part of the country squire, caring for his pigs in whom he perhaps recognised the same characteristics of productive docility as were displayed by his employees.

Baldwin's was an astute ideological base from which to attack the workers. The calm — sometimes indolence — of his exterior concealed a steely resolve which was pitted against the working class in their resistance to the lowering of their wages during the slump. Baldwin has an assured place in the history of class conflict through his handling of the General Strike, when he contemptuously outgeneralled the TUC and then sat back to contemplate the miners being starved into submission. There was cruel suffering for those people, for their children, their families and for the communities where they lived. Baldwin was unmoved; in his ideal scheme of social things there was a place for the workers — but they should know this and keep to it.

A more compassionate — if at times equally indolent — public face was worn by one of Baldwin’s successors, Harold Macmillan, who seemed to regard strikes as a personal affront to his ideal of a united, co-operative, unruffled country in which profits for the ruling class came out in a constant, tranquil flow. Macmillan was always ready to speak on the theme of there being One Nation, which was only to be expected because he owned rather more of the Nation than any of the people he was recommending it to. Now in his declining years, the ex-Prime minister occasionally grumbles that the policies of this government are another affront to his ideal, that they do nothing to promote the prime deceit of One Nation. His words should carry some weight, especially with Tories sitting on a slim majority, for Macmillan knew a thing or two about persuading the working class to vote his way.

If Macmillan were placed in parliament now he might well be among the wets, who are usually pleased to be known as Tories. There is a special irony in this because the Labour Party once used the word Tory as a term of abuse which implied a hard-faced Dickensian indifference to the plight of the poor. The Wets have reacted to this by trying to give the word a more charitable meaning. In the debate last July on the government's refusal to restore the 5 per cent cut in unemployment pay which they imposed in 1980 one outraged Wet, Richard Needham, said "... it is the basis of Tory philosophy that we help those who cannot help themselves" and he was supported by another Wet. Patrick Cormack: "... restore some traditional Toryism to the lobbies, and ensure that those people least able to look after themselves are looked after by us".

A Tory cast in just that mould is Ian Gilmour, who has carried his opposition to the Thatcher government to the extent of speaking at a Child Poverty Action Group fringe meeting at this year's conference. Now this was very bold of Gilmour, since those few Conservatives who have heard of the CPAG probably regard it as highly seditious in its work of highlighting the more extreme poverty among the working class. Well fed pigs are much more attractive and reassuring to look at than half starved children. Gilmour did not attend the meeting to congratulate or to defend the government; he demanded the restoration of the cut in unemployment benefit and larger payments for the unemployed. He is, of course, another very rich Tory — like the man with the bike and the beer he went to Eton - so it was strangely generous of him to worry about the unemployed being deprived of a pittance more each week. It is even more generous of the workers, whether they are unemployed or in an active exploitative state, to take such nonsense seriously.

In any case this government, as they never tire of telling us, are made of sterner stuff. They are unlikely to restore that cut; their resistance to wage claims will probably stay as firm as ever; their resolve to ease the path of British capitalism by forcing down workers’ living standards will not easily waver. And if the election results are any guide there is small prospect of the workers reacting against this. The same patience and optimism which was so effectively exploited by politicians like Baldwin and Macmillan — as well as by Labour leaders — is still there, still pulling in the votes, still keeping capitalism in being.

If the promises of those political leaders had any worth, we would now be living in secure prosperity; the problems which are so troublous now would simply not exist. Workers would be able to vote for parties who had fulfilled their pledges to organise capitalism into a benign, abundant society. But what has actually happened? In March the numbers of people living on Supplementary Benefit rose for the first time above 4 million. Supplementary Benefit was originally designed as a final safety net which would cradle those few people whose usual circumstances had pushed them through the other provisions of the Welfare State. It is now the everyday income which millions of desperate workers rely on to survive.

In April the Department of Health and Social Security (who are supposed to stop it happening) found that over 2 million people are living below the "poverty line" — below the level of existence on Supplementary Benefit which is itself barely enough to live on. That same month the Low Pay Unit and the Civil and Public Services Association reported that the outpacing of wages by price rises was hitting the lower paid particularly hard — that the poorer were getting poorer. There is little hope from the government that this will change. In August, Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe was warning that it will "take a long time” for unemployment to start to fall. There will be no less pressure on those workers who are in employment: in July the President of the Confederation of British Industry described as “bonkers” the idea that wage claims should attempt to compensate for price rises, so that “. . . we should get a bit more each year”.

As those with memories stretching beyond last week will recall, that was exactly the attitude of the last Labour government, who tried to get the workers to accept rises below the rate at which prices were going up. Now it is the policy carried out — or perhaps taken over would be a better term — by a Conservative government. In their efforts to protect the interests of the ruling class, every government is compelled to dispute with the workers over wages. From their point of view, the big problem of the post-war years was the high demand for labour power, which undermined every pay restraint policy, whatever name it went under. This situation was rapidly changing under the Callaghan government and as Labour went out of office unemployment had risen, and was still rising, and seemed likely to continue to do so. Coincident with the election of the Thatcher government the slump deepened and as unemployment has risen still further so the attack on workers' livelihoods has become particularly savage. At the Tory conference, it was the hard-liners, the people who openly express the intention of forcing the workers to suffer most acutely in this crisis, who got the standing ovations: the others won only a ripple of applause scattered among a stony, disapproving silence.

The political danger in this is that the workers are encouraged to blame the Conservatives — or perhaps the Dry Conservatives — for these problems and so to assume that a different party, or a different section of the Conservative Party, would be able to run things differently. Anger and despair at unemployment and extremes of poverty will become focused on the public figures of politicians like Thatcher and Tebbit who, although they do little enough to soften their Gradgrind image, are not responsible for the basic nature of capitalist society. A desire for revenge at the ballot box will obscure the memory that the problems existed under a Labour government and that all parties show themselves equally helpless in face of capitalism's waywardness and anarchy.

Ivan