Running Commentary: Death throes? (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death throes?

As the killings in South Africa continue, the question must be — is this apartheid's last spasm of life?

Prime Minister Botha is faced with a massive problem. On the one hand the system of racial discrimination which his government is pledged to maintain and to develop into the establishment of separate states for blacks and whites is clearly in conflict with the demands of South Africa's expanding capitalist economy. A recent report by a quasi-governmental body condemned apartheid as obsolete and warned of the need for the government to act positively in the matter in the near future. According to some reports. Botha himself is aware that this is true.

This reality is slowly being accepted among even sections of the Afrikaaner population, which is a developing section of the capitalist class, impatient with the obstacles which apartheid must place in the way of profitability. Concessions have already been made and more must follow soon; in particular the government may recognise the need for an authentic negotiator for the Africans.

But the very concession of reforms, such as the recognition of black trade unions, the abolition of the ban on inter-racial marriage and sex and the plans to give South African citizenship to the blacks, can itself be a weakening factor for the government. This is all too obvious to some National Party supporters, who view Botha's attempted appeasement of the protest movement with angry contempt and who may turn their support to even more extreme racist policies in an effort to stem the tide of reform. So Botha is trying to ride a tiger — the ferocious animal of racist bigotry which his party whipped into action in the first place.

The situation now is that, paradoxically, many South African capitalists have political views described as to the "left" of the government. For the South African white workers. this is a time for decisions which their bigotry promises to make extremely painful for them. If or perhaps it should be when the black movement wins, a new sort of reality will emerge which in many ways will be as difficult as the present. There will be yet another rising capitalist state in Africa where the ruling class is dominantly black. The workers, whatever their skin colour, will have exchanged one set of exploiters for another.

Vultures

As if they had not suffered enough already, the survivors of the Manchester airport disaster were immediately subjected to the additional stress of the vulture-like attention of eminent persons such as Prince Charles (trying to prove that the royal family are a useful, caring influence in society); Margaret Thatcher (trying to win. or perhaps recover, some votes); and Manchester's Chief Constable James Anderton (of whom the less said the better).

These migrants were soon followed by another species, also seeking to prey on the victims' distress, as lawyers descended on Manchester and set up shop in the hope of handling claims against the airlines. From Philadelphia came Jim Pearce, countered by Manchester's own Rodger Pannone. Generous Malcolm Mason put an advertisement in a Sheffield newspaper inviting reverse-charge calls from anyone willing to let his New York firm handle their claims for damages. Naturally, the lawyers asserted that they were all acting in the victims' best interests; money, they reason, does not bring back the dead but it does an awful lot to soothe the grief of the bereaved. In the form of commission on a successful law suit, it also injects a healthy blush into a balance sheet.

But these were not the only vultures involved in this tragedy. Holiday charter aircraft are crammed with passengers; if this were not so, the operators say, the business would not be profitable — and the trade is savagely competitive. The extra seats mean narrower aisles in the aircraft, which means a more difficult, slower exit in an emergency.

British Airways (the World's Favourite Airline, say Saatchi and Saatchi) have taken the matter further than this. They have blocked some of the exits on some of their aircraft to make way for more seats. Then there is the matter of the materials used in the seating, which in most cases is little better than deadly in a fire. There is a flame-retardant covering available but this at present costs quite a bit more than the present stuff, which brings the airlines up against the demands of profit again.

Finally, the aircraft themselves are worked to their limits, to schedules designed to extract the maximum of profit from them. Servicing intervals must be crammed into these demands. Even after the disaster at Manchester, a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration announced that checks on the suspect engines would have to . . coincide with airline maintenance and flying schedules".

It might be some consolation to the people who died in the fire, and to their families and friends, to know that they died to keep a schedule, to protect the profits of the airlines and the holiday operators. The drive for profit allows no peace for human beings, alive or dead.

On the rampage

It is by now an established routine that after each inner-city riot, such as that last month in Handsworth, the experts run amok brandishing their theories, explanations and remedies.

Some Labour politicians attribute the riots to the effects of unemployment and therefore, by implication, to Thatcher's policies. The left wing put the blame onto heavy-handed police techniques and argue that the remedy is a democratically accountable police force, ignoring the fact that the police are already accountable to the class whose interests they exist to protect — the capitalists.

Blacks are certain that it is all caused by racial discrimination and offer the policy of "smashing" racism, which usually means substituting one type of repression for another, with little to choose between them. The police — and most Tories — insist that the riots are matters of simple criminality, of the perverse drive of a minority to disrupt what is called civilised life. Their remedy, pronounced with varying degrees of ghoulish thrill, is harsher punishment and more of it.

All of these are agreed on one thing. There must be An Enquiry To Get To The Bottom Of It. When the Enquiry has reported and all the experts have read the report we shall be able to re-organise things so that it never happens again.

It is all as if history never happened, as if Handsworth has not already suffered a riot, as if St. Pauls, Brixton, Toxteth are places where peace has reigned undisturbed. Is it really necessary to go through all this agony, just to get a visit from a cabinet minister and the promise of a few new buildings, a few square yards of grassland, a few trees planted?

The flaw which is shared by all the arguments of the "experts" is that they are based on a superficial view of society and its problems. All of them presume that a social system based on the class ownership of the means of life is logical, efficient and pretty well eternal. This might be all very well except that this system must throw up social ailments which will come to some very nasty crises.

Capitalism separates the majority of people from access to the means of life except as employees, workers for a wage. It denies them access to wealth except as buyers; however much we need it we can't get hold of anything without in some way paying for it.

One result of this is that the majority of people are in a state of alienation — from their employment, from their environment, from their human prospects. This alienation is at its most acute where poverty is deepest, in the grimmer places of working-class life such as inner city areas whose grime, slums and apathy are material expressions of frustration.

Capitalism cannot be a society of harmony.

Blogger's Note:

The November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article by Ron Cook on the recent riots in Handsworth and, also, his memories of growing up in Handsworth in the 1930s.

Myths of race and nation (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Nationalism teaches you to hate people you never met and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.’ So said the American comedian, author and actor, Doug Stanhope. Given that this dictum appears to state something obvious and irrefutable, we might expect it to be widely accepted and so for nationalism to get overwhelmingly rejected by the large-brained creatures that we are. Yet we know that this is not what happens. Almost wherever you look in the world, nationalism is alive and well, and in fact, with the rise of populism, an increasing number of people seem to be openly espousing it together with its brother-in-arms, racism.

Why? The simplest explanation is to be found in the word ‘insecurity’. The system of society that dominates the world – capitalism – by its very nature makes most of those who live under it feel insecure. It forces the overwhelming majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage or salary throughout most of our lives. And we never quite know whether the living provided by that wage or salary will continue, become precarious or be thrown into disarray by the uncontrollable market forces that govern the capitalist system. The instability this generates makes most of us easy prey to the idea, often spread or at least bolstered by governments (or by those waiting in the wings who would like to govern), that people who don’t appear ‘native’ to a particular country are somehow to blame for that insecurity. The idea prevails among many that it is those non-natives that cause it, that make things go wrong by taking ‘our’ jobs, consuming ‘our’ resources, and even committing most acts of criminality.

Of course such a notion is not just recent. It has been present throughout the history of capitalism and indeed, despite its apparent surge via ugly right-wing populism in recent times, it has actually been far worse in past times. In the recent news has been the outcry over the alleged blatant anti-semitism exhibited by Nigel Farage in his youth, and all Jewish people will know that in those years such anti-semitism was widespread and almost ‘normal’. This writer has a clear memory of such incidents in his own school years, for example an occasion when in front of the whole of the class one pupil turned to someone and loudly addressed him as a ‘big fat yid’. No one batted an eyelid then. Now they certainly would. In fact such an incident would be far less likely to happen at all today or, if it did, would cause significant consternation and lead to consequences for the person responsible.

Of course, even worse humiliation and discrimination was suffered by people of colour in those years. Older generations sometimes talk about the open, unabated, taken-for-granted racism they suffered. In a recent BBC Profile programme, for example, about the black screen and stage actor David Harewood, we heard of him being chased through the streets by skinheads and bricks being thrown through the family’s windows. Such open racism is clearly far less virulent today. And even if the clock may seem to be turning backwards in certain ways and in certain countries, the fact is that not long ago the US had a black president, it currently has a Moslem mayor in its major city, and in recent years in the UK too, many major political figures have ethnic minority backgrounds, including the current leader of the Conservative Party. All this would have seemed unimaginable just 40-50 years ago.

Further evidence of this increased acceptance of ‘others’ and diminution of racism is to be found in the UK’s most popular sport, football. People from a great diversity of backgrounds play together on the pitch and are often idolized by supporters, themselves often of diverse origins and skin shades, who mingle together in the stands. Again this is something new compared to previous years when teams had few foreign or black players and football fans from ethnic minorities even avoided going to matches for fear of abuse or attack. One incident among others that this writer remembers from the 1980s (so a relatively short time ago) was being in the crowd at a match between Manchester United and Norwich City and hearing the one black player on the pitch, Ruel Fox, repeatedly having the word ‘coonie’ shouted at him – something that no one seemed to find unusual. One could almost rule out such a scenario today.

Overall, therefore, despite the fact that those with racist notions and tendencies may feel emboldened by phenomena such as the Brexit vote, the rise of Reform UK, the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence in Europe of right-wing populist parties and governments, it remains very much the exception rather than the norm for racism and nationalism to be expressed crudely and publicly. Such expression tends to exist rather in the echo chambers of social media. That is not of course to say that the divide and rule weapons of nationalism and racism are likely to be put aside by those governing – or aiming to govern – a system that is by its very nature riven with insecurity and instability. It serves the purpose of distracting attention from the real reason for that insecurity and instability, which is the division of society into two classes – on the one hand the minority who own most of the wealth (the capitalist class) and on the other the overwhelming majority who own little and can only survive by selling their energies for a wage or salary (the working class). Divide and rule will only be transcended when the members of the majority class decide to act collectively and democratically to win the political power which is needed to shift society from production for the profit of the few to production for the needs of all. Then we will be free of the divisions of ‘race’ and of ‘nation’ that afflict humans across the planet. Then we will be able to focus on what unites rather than divides us.

Howard Moss

After Leyton, What? (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Leyton by-election has passed into political history, and for a long time to come will be one of the psephologists’ favourite test-tubes.

It was also the psephologists’ nightmare, disproving all their predictions and setting the opinion polls to searching for what went wrong. This is all strongly reminiscent of the Truman victory in the United States in 1948. None of the pollsters cared to recall, after Leyton, that in 1948 they said they had found a hidden defect in their systems, that they had eliminated it and that such mistakes would not happen again.

In fact, there were signs before the votes were cast that things were not going too well for Mr. Gordon Walker. The Wilson government had not produced the promised rabbits out of the expected hats. The pensioners were annoyed about having to wait for their rise, the mortgagees were furious that their rise—in the interest rates—came upon them so quickly. On 20th. January, The Guardian’s reporter noticed “… a remarkably consistent switch away from Labour. It would not be sufficient to upset the Foreign Secretary’s anticipated election . . . but (it) would reduce his majority considerably.”

As it turned out, that was an understatement. Leyton confirmed a trend which has been developing for some time now —the trend towards an electoral mood more volatile than that which, for years after the war, stolidly returned “no change” verdicts in by-election after by-election. Orpington Man, now old and well established, has been followed by the perhaps more menacing figure of Leyton Man.

Along with the psephologists, the Labour Party are also looking for what went wrong. In a letter to The Observer, Lord Sorensen made it clear that he thought the defeat was caused by what he called “unworthy abstentions.” Having been kicked upstairs so that Mr. Gordon Walker could lose his seat, Lord Sorensen obviously feels the defeat especially strongly. But during the election, the Labour Party were content to accept what they presumed would be a favourable result: “I will consider the result a verdict on the Government and on the Opposition’s performance to date.” (Mr. Gordon Walker, at Leyton, 14th. January.) Well, the verdict is plain; even the verdict of those who voted by staying away from the polling booths. The Labour government has not been able to inspire its supporters to turn out to vote for it, which says very little for their talk, during the general election, of action and progress and urgency.

Lord Sorensen did not confine his strictures to abstainers: “. . . the deliberate denigration of Gordon Walker . . . demonstrates how far we have to go to ensure that electors vote on principles and policies rather than being swayed by extraneous secondary matters.”

Two things are apparent from this statement. The first is that Lord Sorensen is complaining about votes which lost his party a seat; if the election had gone the other way, he would have been full of praise for the voters’ sanity and principles. The second point, which follows from the first, is that what Lord Sorensen means by “voting on principles” is, in fact, voting blindly for the Labour Party, whatever their record, whatever hardships they impose upon the working class and however many promises they break.

It will be interesting to ask, now, what the Labour Party does to realise Sorensen’s dream of people voting on principles and policies. The first step in this should be, of course, for the Labour Party themselves to have some principles for the electors to vote on. But a look at the programmes which they have offered shows that principles are the last things the Labour Party has, or indeed wants.

What has happened, for example, to the “principle” of the nationalisation of land? To the “principle” of abolition of the House of Lords? (Lord Sorensen himself should be able to answer that one.) What has happened to the “principles” put forward by the Labour Party at the more recent elections —nationalisation of “sections of the chemical and machine tools industries” (1955) and the renationalisation of road haulage (1959)?

There was no mention of either of these in Labour’s 1964 programme, which means that any elector who was anxious to vote for them, innocently thinking them to be part of Labour’s principles, was disappointed.

Even more to the point, what has happened to the Labour Party’s opposition to the Commonwealth Immigration Act? When the Conservative government introduced the measure, Labour fought bitterly against it, and perhaps convinced some voters that they did so on grounds of principle. But since then their “principles” have, apparently, changed; the tears of defeat were hardly dry on Gordon Walker’s face when Labour’s Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice was telling the House of Commons that, far from abolishing the restrictions on immigrants, the government intends to ” … make stricter use of the existing powers of control . . .” This must have been very confusing to anyone at Leyton who wanted to vote, as Lord Sorensen advises, on the principle of the thing.

This confusion is cleared up only by realising that the Labour Party has no principle other than their basic support of capitalism. Within that, they will support any policy, temporary or otherwise, which seems expedient. To get into power, they will promise all sorts of things—Gaitskell’s tax cuts in 1959, George Brown’s three per cent mortgage last October—which they think will attract votes. They do not particularly care who joins their ranks, recruiting freely anyone who will pay their dues. (Some prominent men they have actually invited to join.) Labour’s preoccupation with collecting votes means that they do not bother about the intention and knowledge behind the votes. They anxiously solicit the support of people who are politically ignorant. The very last thing they intend to do is to encourage the electors to vote on principles, because that would be the death of them and of the parties like them.

This is not to say that the Labour Party does not offer a substitute for principles. Their leaders are constantly making what seem to be brave statements of conviction and intent, which probably impress people who do not care to look behind the empty phrase. Wilson, for example, told the T.U.C. last September that this is “… a time for choice, for action, for decision, for exciting change …” Gordon Walker told the voters at Leyton that he stood for “… the abolition of all weapons, both nuclear and conventional, except those needed for internal security and international peacekeeping,” which is the same as saying, that he stands for the abolition of all weapons except those that he wants to keep. It is this sort of mishmash of nonsense that the Labour Party offer as their principles, and which Lord Sorensen wants us to vote on.

The inevitable result of this is that the vote which elects a Labour MP is unstable. It is not a vote for any political principle, let alone a vote for Socialism, with all that implies. Sometimes it is a vote for a set of capitalist reforms like the National Health Service or an alteration in the Pensions Scheme. More often, it is a vote for a vague and ill-informed idea of what the Labour Party stands for—a vague idea that they stand for the interests of people who live on council estates, for closer relations with Russia and so on.

Perhaps it was this which caused Leyton to pass its scathing verdict on the Labour government before it had even had time to bring in the reforms which it had promised—an apt comment on the instability of a vote which is based on a lack of political consciousness. Perhaps it also brought about the defeat of Gordon Walker at Smethwick; the voters there apparently wanted immigration control yet they rejected a man who, as he himself pointed out, stood for just that.

But an unstable vote which switches from Labour to Tory in one election will as quickly change back to Labour again. It is reasonable to assume that anything which the Labour Party may have lost on the swings of electoral instability they have gained on the roundabouts. There are probably plenty of voters who support the Labour Party because they are convinced that they stand for higher wages, or that they would pursue a different policy from the Tories in disputes like those in Malaysia and Arabia. Now if the Labour Party was as interested in political principles as Lord Sorensen would have us believe, they would discourage such votes by pointing out, firmly and clearly, that on these issues their policy is as imperialist as that of the Tories. But this, of course, is something they never do.

No capitalist party can try to destroy the mutually supporting circle of ignorance and futility which keeps one or other of them in power. Any examination of the policies of these parties, in terms of principles and effectiveness, would compel the admission that practically every one of them was useless and that many of them were inspired by vote-catching expediency. It would compel the admission that, after all the speeches and the programmes and the promises, the problems which afflicted the working class when the Labour Party was born are still, in one way or another, troubling them today.

The Labour Party would have to admit something else besides. After nearly sixty years of their propaganda, after the position of great power which they have held and still hold, there are still enough workers who harbour racial prejudices to hound a Labour Minister from one Parliamentary seat to another. Racial theories cannot be separated from the rest of the false political ideas which the working class hold, and which the Labour Party have done nothing to dispel. If it is true that racism is among the more primitive and vicious of working class delusions, that is a bitter comment upon the confusion and ignorance which the Labour Party has helped to spread.

They can have no complaint if this confusion, which may help them at one time, harms them at another. From some aspects, elections are depressing affairs, because it is never very inspiring to witness the working class opting for another dose of capitalist suppression. But even more depressing the 1964 election saw the emergence of race as an issue, strongly in some constituencies, and underlying the campaign as a whole.

Douglas-Home has now indicated that the Conservatives intend to bring immigration more and more into the forefront of political controversy. It is not comforting to reflect upon the history of similar situations, and upon the possible outcome of this one. The alarming thing about racial theories is that, unlike most other working class delusions, they are so often asserted in the most extreme and relentless violence. Leyton at the moment is a psephologist’s test tube, but who dare say that one day it will not be remembered as the start of the experiment which blew up the laboratory?

Ivan

Exhibition Review: Being here (2025)

'Private Face'

Exhibition Review from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black people may be said to have been excluded from art in two ways. Firstly, there have until fairly recently been few black artists, and secondly, black people have been rarely depicted in works of art and, where shown, are often placed in a subordinate role. These and other issues are addressed in an exhibition of the work of Barbara Walker, ‘Being Here’, at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The Whitworth display closed in late January, but it will move to the Arnolfini in Bristol from March.

Walker (barbarawalker.co.uk) was born in Birmingham in 1964, and only in 1996 did she obtain a BA in Art and Design. Since then she has been a prolific artist, in both painting and drawing, and one aspect of her oeuvre is that she usually works in series, producing not just individual works but linked pieces.

Between 1998 and 2005, for instance, she painted a series of portraits of black people under the heading of ‘Private Face’: friends and neighbours shown undertaking everyday tasks such as playing cards or having their hair arranged. ‘Louder than Words’ (2006–9) focuses on her son Solomon, who was frequently subject to stop and search by West Midlands Police. The report forms from the searches have portraits of Solomon or local scenes added to them. Also included is a reference to the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London in 2005, a newspaper report with a drawing of Solomon on it.

Perhaps the most original and striking is the series Shock and Awe (2015–20). Walker scoured archives for photos of black soldiers in the two world wars, such as a South African general inspecting members of the South African Native Labour Corps in France in 1917. Her drawing based on this photo, ‘Parade II’, emphasises the soldiers, and the general is an almost blank outline. A similar approach is taken in other drawings from the same series, and again in Vanishing Point (since 2018), where classical paintings are re-presented in a new way, with the black individuals drawn more precisely and the white people (the focus of the original paintings) again shown as outlines.

All in all, an unexpected and thought-provoking exhibition.

Paul Bennett

Running Commentary: Free speech (1985)

The Running Commentary Column from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free speech

The ruling class in South Africa has imposed new censorship laws preventing foreign journalists reporting the current unrest and violence. The editor of the liberal (by South African standards) Cape Times, Anthony Heard, is to be prosecuted for publishing an interview with the banned leader of the African National Congress, Oliver Tambo, under a section of the Internal Security Act which prohibits the printing, publishing or dissemination without government permission of "any speech, utterance, writing or statement'' of a "banned'' person. Heard did not seek permission to publish the interview since he considered the public have a "right" to be informed about matters of importance. What he will discover is that in capitalism workers do not have "rights" except those legal rights granted by their political masters. Such legal rights are neither absolute nor inalienable. If the capitalist class feels that its interests are threatened by such "rights" as freedom of speech, a free press, freedom of movement or freedom to demonstrate then they will be suspended through Emergency Powers legislation, internal security measures or in the interests of "national security".

The white ruling class clearly feels itself under threat from the black nationalist movement, hence the tightening of the screw. But does it really believe it can conceal for long the contradictions inherent in the apartheid system, and the cruelty, poverty and inhumanity perpetrated in the name of white supremacy?

Race laws

Twenty years ago, in 1965, the first legislation was passed which attempted to outlaw racial discrimination in Britain, since when a number of other Acts have extended the scope of race relations law. So what is the position of blacks in Britain today?

As is well known, and as the Policy Studies Institute confirmed in its report Black and White in Britain, blacks are still relatively disadvantaged: they tend to live in worse housing than white workers, receive lower pay, get the worst jobs and are more likely to be unemployed. Increasingly they have been the victims of racial attacks and violence.

Various reasons have been given for this failure to improve the state of race relations but none has even begun to address the real problem. That is that it is impossible to legislate to change people's attitudes. They are shaped by the conditions of society in which we live. In capitalism conflict and competition between workers is inherent: competition for jobs, houses and other "scarce" resources. It is not surprising therefore that those who lose out in that competition frequently give vent to their frustration in the form of hostility towards blacks as an identifiable group.

No amount of legislation can change such feelings. What is needed is the recognition amongst all workers, men and women, black and white, that we do have interests in common, that transcend racial, cultural or gender divisions, but those interests will never be fully realised so long as capitalism continues. What we don't need is another piece of legislation outlawing racial discrimination; what we do need is democratic, political organisation to abolish the root cause of racism—capitalism.

Queen’s speech

Although the next general election is probably another two years away, it looks as if the government's campaign has begun in earnest. Its programme for the new session of Parliament, outlined in the Queen's speech, includes a Bill to deal with Public Order (likely to be a big vote-catcher given the hysteria whipped up over events on miners' picket lines and in inner cities); more privatisation to raise money for tax cuts; further "de-regulation", including the removal of restrictions on Sunday shopping, a limitation on the activities of Wages Councils so that workers under 21 will no longer have their pay protected, more private management of council housing estates; and changes in social security benefits.

What will this programme of legislation mean to workers? Is there anything to persuade us that the government is indeed acting in our interests?

Sunday shopping

Although some people might think that unrestricted opening hours are in workers' interests. we should remember that the shop-workers' union. USDAW, at least, is opposed to such a change. They fear that it will lead to their already badly paid members working much longer hours without the benefit of overtime rates. It becomes clear whose interests the proposed change is designed to serve when "Open Shop", the pressure group in favour of Sunday trading, lists among its members such giant retailers as Asda. MFI. Habitat/Mothercare, W.H. Smith and Woolworth.

Social security

The review of the Social Security system was intended to look for ways in which benefits could be "targetted" on those most in need, or at least that's the story we were given. The changes are likely to affect pensions. supplementary benefit, support for the low paid and housing benefit. A report published recently by the Policy Studies Institute (The Examination of Social Security) states that if the government s plans go ahead, some of the neediest and most disabled claimants will actually lose money.

Privatisation

The government expects to realise £10 billion from its sale of British Gas. It also plans to sell off shares in airports owned by the British Airports Authority and introduce "commercial management" into the naval dockyards. All this, it is hoped, will not only provide some spare cash for tax cuts, but also give people the opportunity to buy shares in companies presently legally owned by the state. If the workers weren't conned by the Labour trick of nationalisation. then maybe they can be duped into believing that they can have a real stake in the capitalist system of society by buying a few shares. The truth is very different. It makes no difference to the working class whether the means of production are privately owned or state owned; whether or not we own a few shares, workers will never have access to the wealth that we, as a class, collectively produce. Plans to give tenants some say in the management of council estates are part of an attempt to create the same illusion. Who wants to be part of a "property owning democracy" when the only property we own is a tower block slum?

Public order

The proposed changes to the law relating to Public Order will give the police greater powers to restrict marches and demonstrations. and to decide how many people should stand where on a picket line. A new offence of "disorderly conduct" will be created and the old common law offences of riot and affray will be tightened up (no doubt because of recent failures to secure prosecutions of people charged with these offences). These changes will mean that the legal rights of workers to protest, demonstrate and picket will be curtailed.

So the Queen's speech seems to have left out one important statement. It should have read as follows: "My government will continue to support absolutely the capitalist system of society which concentrates ownership and wealth in the hands of the minority capitalist class, at the expense of the working class who produce all wealth through their labour. My government will continue to support the police force and the other coercive machinery of state, which acts to protect the interests of parasites like myself against any perceived threat by the workers".

Janie Percy-Smith

Racism rears its ugly head (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Leninist ideologues of the SWP believe a ban on the BNP will go some way to eradicate racism. To this end they re-formed the Anti Nazi League in January 1992 to confront racist boneheads head on and to awaken public consciousness as to a "new Fascist threat". Similarly, the Anti Racist Alliance — another of the anti-racist groups that have sprung up in recent years, vying to be the standard bearers of the cause — believe making racial harassment a criminal offence and tightening restrictions on the sale of extreme-right literature will make racism go away.

Both seem not to realize that the prevalence of racist ideas is largely due to the official racism that has been perpetrated by British governments, local councils, courts, police, etc throughout the twentieth century.

Successive Liberal, Tory and Labour Governments have been at the forefront in promoting xenophobia through Act of Parliament for almost 90 years: 1905 Aliens Act; 1914 Aliens Restriction Act; 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act; 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act; 1971 Immigration Act; 1981 British Nationality Act; 1991 Asylum Bill. These Acts resulted in the lowering of successful applications for UK citizenship by 28 percent last year the lowest for 10 years.

Racist candidate

In 1964, a Tory candidate won the Smethwick Parliamentary seat from Labour with the slogan "if you want a nigger lor a neighbour, vote Labour". In the May 1979 election, a month after Blair Peach lost his life at an anti-Nazi rally, the NF vote fell from 19.2 percent to 6.1 percent in its strongest seat. This had less to do with public disapproval of racism and more to do with the ascendancy of Margaret Thatcher. As one Guardian writer pointed out:

The demise of the NF as a political force was mainly due to Margaret Thatcher rather than any anti-racist campaign. When she said in 1978 that the British people feared they were ’being swamped by an alien culture’, NF supporters switched to Conservative" (14 May).

November 1991 saw Kenneth Clarke, the then Education Secretary, stepping in to prevent a housing association moving five black families from inner-city Nottingham into his neighbouring suburban constituency of Rushcliffe. Clarke feared the families would be "problem families", and that their homes would become half way houses for criminals. Challenged on the matter he replied "I am not concerned about the colour of people’s skin, but you don’t put square pegs in round holes” (Guardian, 22 November 1992).

The current panic about the rising tide of fascism has been sparked by a BNP candidate, Derek Beackon, securing a council seat in the East End ward of Millwall. One BNP councillor, however no more constitutes the dawn of the Fourth Reich than did the victory of the two NF councillors in Blackburn in the mid 1970s.

Neither is racism in Tower Hamlets anything new. When the Liberals took the Tower Hamlets council from Labour seven years ago they embarked upon a discriminatory housing policy, which was attacked for its racist nature in giving priority to the sons and daughters of Tower Hamlets residents. In 1991 the Commission for Racial Equality look the Lib-Dcm council to the High Court for failing to ensure that their housing policies did not discriminate against ethnic minorities. The High Court ruled against the Lib-Dem council housing policy. However, the extent of official racism was this year to become even more evident when the Court of Appeal went on to rule against the decision, permitting the council to investigate the immigration status of applicants.

If anything, the BNP victory was the result of local disenchantment at the efforts of the three mainstream political parties in the area, and frustration caused by local levels of poverty, unemployment and deprivation. Tower Hamlets has pockets of high unemployment and last year out of a total housing stock of 67,581, 45,475 houses were found to be unfit to live in or in desperate need of repair.

Racist housing policy, though, is not confined to the East End of London. In October of this year it was announced that the Labour-controlled Liverpool City Council were to be taken to the High Court by the Commission for Racial Equality, for its failure to comply with its order to end discriminative housing policy.

Official racism is all around us, and not confined to the activities of a few East End boneheads. The whirlwind of patriotism and jingoism, for instance, whipped by the Gulf War with the help of the right wing press (Sun, Daily Mail, etc) provoked widespread violence and racial abuse in Britain, including the firebombing of 20 mosques.

In June this year, European Community Ministers agreed to strengthen the walls of "Fortress Europe" in the wake of an influx of Bosnian refugees fleeing the civil war in former Yugoslavia. At the same time the British government were detaining 200 immigrants without trial.

Hitler impressed

Those who think that the BNP are unique in their wish to make Britain "racially pure" would do well to remember that the sentiments expressed by Winston Churchill almost 90 years ago. Churchill, impressed by the theories of Social Darwinism, theories that also impressed Hitler, wanted to sterilize 100,000 "mentally degenerate" Britons who he felt were threatening to sully the British character.

These sentiments have echoed down the years, changing form as the situation demands and nowadays finding outlet, amongst other things, in official opposition to the ERM and Maastricht, "Buy British" campaigns and belligerent tabloid headlines that condone the efforts of "our boys" overseas. Anything, in fact, that might impinge upon the 'British way of life" is viewed as a threat by reactionaries from the Labour Party to the extreme right.

The calls to "Ban the BNP" and "Bash the Fash" by the ARA and the ANL must be opposed by Socialists. As Socialists we should uphold the right to platform. Once we beg the state to regulate organizations and movements we set precedents that pave the way for regulations for other organizations Gay Rights. Pro-Abortionists, single parent groups, perhaps a ban on the SWP. the RCP and the Socialist Party? Andrew Puddephatt of Liberty expresses similar thoughts: in banning the BNP. he said "there is a danger that the government will begin to ban groups which are opposed to their policies" (Guardian, 28 September).

Calling for a ban on the BNP is tantamount to admitting that the working class lacks the ability, the confidence, the ideology, the arguments to tackle racist views head on and to discredit them. At the same time, appeals to the state to ban far right groups distracts attention from the real cause of racism — the capitalist system. Those who openly promote racism can hardly be counted on to abolish it

Home Secretary Michael Howard was right when he commented on the BNP: "Paradoxically, repressive legislation might actually be welcome to such organisations".

To ban the BNP would be to force it underground, to make it a paramilitary organization and thus more attractive to its supporters who relish violence and thrive on the oxygen of publicity. In Northern Ireland a host of organizations are banned (IRA, INLA, IPLO, UVF, UDF, UFF) — this does not stop them killing hundreds of people a year and causing widespread destruction from Belfast to London.

During the ANL march on the BNP headquarters at Welling, a black police constable. Leslie Turner, was apparently singled out for a beating by ANL activists. Speaking from his hospital bed. PC Turner reflected that the BNP had a "legitimate right to freedom of speech" (Times, 18 October).

Is there not an irony in this for the SWP? That in a march they organized to confront racism a black police constable was beaten up who believed racist thugs — who also would have liked to have given him a beating — should have the right to express their views.

Perhaps the BNP could also draw a lesson from this. Of the 20,000 who took to the streets that day. the one that took a beating in protecting them was one they would "repatriate". Both parties, the BNP and the SWP, should stop their infantile bickering and single-issue policies and realize that the real cause of poverty, housing shortages, unemployment is the capitalist system, a system where profits always come first. What we need is class unity. If we must ban anything, ban capitalism!

John Bissett

Does the SWP have an answer to racism? (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Is violent confrontation the answer?

The week after the Unity march was held in October to protest against racism and the BNP, the SWP organised a meeting at the LSE entitled "Why the police protect the Nazis". The speaker was the leading SWP member, Tony Cliff. Anyone attending this meeting to hear anything about why the police protect the Nazis, assuming as the title did that this was the case, would, though, have been very disappointed. The speaker, stupidly or dishonestly, thought that it was enough of an argument to shout to the audience (1) that most police are Nazis and (2) that the police had the constitutional job of supervising the Unity march, so therefore (3) the reason why the police prevented SWP members from burning down the BNP Head Office was that the police were Nazis.

This is what logicians describe as assuming what you are trying to prove. Cliff’s argument was about as strong in its structure as the argument that God is all powerful because created the Universe. Had he been putting this argument about the police being Nazis to an audience on Any Questions or Question Time or on an outdoor platform at Speakers’ Corner, he would have been quite rightly refuted and ridiculed by any cross section of workers.

As it was, Cliff’s audience, many of whom had attended the march, seemed content to wholeheartedly agree with Cliffs rousing oratory. One irony here is that after the contentious report (commissioned by the government from the tobacco magnate Patrick Sheehy) to run the police like a business, many police officers have been wooed by the stringent law and order promises of Tony Blair. Labour’s hopeful Shadow Home Secretary; the result is that come the next general election many coppers will be voting for the same party as the members of the SWP: the Labour Party. It is a point of historical record that at general elections, after lambasting the Labour Party and all its necessary shortcomings, the SWP asks its members to vote for Labour candidates as the election of another Labour government will give workers “an inch more space to manoeuvre" than under the Conservatives.

The Unity march had been organised in the wake of growing racism in Britain and across Europe. The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Workers become desperate and often, ignorantly. look for easily identifiable scapegoats. Racism is thus adopted by them and exploited by those brighter, ruthless politicians who see votes and power in it. The real problem in Tower Hamlets in East London, where Derek Beackon was recently elected as a BNP councillor, is a housing problem.

Respectable racism

It is very important to look at how racism moves from being the nasty neurosis of a few frustrated fanatics and thugs to an idea which thousands of people begin to vote for. The problem in Tower Hamlets is not so much the few skinheads who sell the BNP literature on a Saturday morning — although the threat they pose to local ethnic minorities causes a lot of fear and misery — it is the thousand people with "respectable" appearances who voted BNP in the election and the tens of thousands in Britain who could soon be doing the same thing.

What did the SWP say about this problem at the meeting? What educational and argumentative ammunition did it provide for the eager young radicals who attended to learn about how to persuade fellow workers against racism? The SWP speaker said nothing about such arguments. Absolutely nothing. Instead the 30-minute talk was devoted entirely to repealing the mantra about the police all being Nazis, and to looking at half a dozen ways of using physical force against fascists. His tirade included all the vocabulary of "barricade storming" and the need to use guns against fascist thugs who have knives. Cliff’s argument was befitting of any angry young child who had not yet understood the rôle of ideas in politics.

Fascism personified

He saw fascism as an almost physical entity, a concrete part of society, personified in the small number of identifiable members or officers of the BNP. These people had to be "taken out" (physically deterred from being fascists, by being beaten up or, presumably, killed) and then the problem would be solved. You have to surgically remove the "bad apples". In one of many moments of flamboyant rhetoric he said:

"I'll tell you this. If you have a barrel of good apples but there is in the middle of the good apples one bad apple, the good apples will not make the bad apple good."

What followed from this simplistic and strikingly inappropriate metaphor, is that if the "bad apple" of fascism currently sitting in the middle of society could somehow be surgically removed, then all the good apples would be preserved Although Cliff’s language was riddled with references to force being used against the Nazis, he nowhere articulated with any precision how far his young acolytes should go in the furtherance of their aim to "remove the bad apple". Are the fascists to be simply threatened with baseball bats to relinquish their bigotries; are they to be rounded up and locked away to rot in some secret SWP political prison camps for workers with "the wrong attitude"; or was Cliff recommending that, ultimately, these political incorrigibles should he assassinated?

This meeting, like other SWP meetings I have attended, was rigged. It could not be described as an open, honest meeting designed as a genuine forum for workers to discuss the ideas put by the speaker. The rigging works in this way. The speaker addresses the meeting for half an hour. The chairperson then invites people from the floor for any questions to the speaker or points they wish to raise. Some of these questions, as you might imagine, raise points which are very awkward for the SWP. pointing to inconsistencies in its propaganda, undemocratic features of its organisation or clearly anti-working-class conduct it urges upon its followers. Rather than require the speaker to answer each point from the floor once it has been made (and thus allowing the questioner to come back if they are not satisfied with the speaker's response), the chairperson simply takes all the questions from the floor in sequence without any response from the speaker. When the chairperson thinks enough questions and points have been raised, he or she then invites the speaker to respond to the points collectively. This sinister technique thus permits the speaker to pass over any really troublesome points, damning them with feint response. Such meetings, in the best traditions of authoritarian, deceptive showpieces, give the appearance of being open because questions from the floor are allowed but in reality the questions that the SWP would prefer not to be asked of them in public are deftly avoided by their speakers.

That was exactly what Tony Cliff did at this meeting. One of the first questioners was a young man who identified himself as having been a long-time resident of London’s East End. He said that he could not really see any substantial difference between what Cliff had urged anti fascists to do (i.e., beat up fascists) and what the fascists were doing (beating up anti-fascists and people from ethnic minorities). If what the SWP objected to in fascism was it reliance on force to further its ideas, its bullying, threatening tactics, then surely it was wrong to employ exactly those tactics in opposing the rise of fascism? A few SWP members coughed and shuffled about at this point but Cliff was saved from having to enter into any serious debate with this man because the chairperson moved immediately to the next questioner. When the time did come for Cliff to respond to the six or seven points put to him. he dealt contemptuously with the point from the East Ender. The answer, in a few seconds before hopping on to a more friendly question with a much practised agility, was simply that the force of the anti-fascists was historically justified because (a) the other side started it and (b) the force the the fascists had used before (in the Second World War) and were planning to use again was of such a high order that it would be foolish to try and respond in the realm of ideas.

We were back to the principles of gangsterism. The talk of Robert de Niro playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. "If someone comes for me with fists, I answer with a knife. If he comes with a knife I answer with a gun . . ." Many people in areas like Tower Hamlets are living in desperate poverty. There is a housing crisis. Some people from ethnic minorities do have housing and so ignorant workers are left prey to the idea that if these "immigrants" were ail shipped away then there would be plenty of houses and jobs for "British" workers. What is the best way to argue against this sort of politics? Don’t ask Tony Cliff, he doesn’t seem to know or care. At least if he has any thoughts on these matters he was not disposed to share them with anyone at the SWP meeting. Cliff had other things on his mind and sounded more like Lennox Lewis’s coach than a political thinker.

Burn it down

One of the questions was from a young man from Northern Ireland. He spoke as a member of the SWP and was very keen that the meeting should focus closely on exactly why the SWP activists on the march had been prevented from turning down Upper Wickham Lane in Welling, towards the BNP headquarters "to burn it down". There was momentary unease from some at the meeting whereupon the questioner decided to be more up front: "I mean we might as well be clear about what we w'ere trying to do". He went on to fulminate against the police and how despicably pro-Nazi their conduct was in not permitting reasonable activists like himself to go about their proper civic business with cans of petrol and flame throwers. Clearly, the state was in cahoots with the BNP. Quite who the SWP would turn to for assistance if the BNP threatened to bum down its premises is open to question.

The interesting thing about the contribution of the young frustrated arsonist was that no one sought to dissent from the aim of the march that he avowed. Tony Cliff did not say, for example, in summing up. that the SWP had not formulated any such plan. The chairperson did not publicly proclaim that the questioner was, in fact, speaking for himself alone when ranting on about the need to burn things down. The young firebrand turned out to be the kid who yelled that the Emperor had no clothes on: the naive exposer of truth.

Workers from different cultures and ethnic groups have more in common that that which distinguishes them. They are all living in relative poverty and insecurity while they are systematically robbed by the owners of the means of producing wealth (owners who come from all sorts of racial groups). Racism has not tended to develop in times of economic boom; it flourishes when the going gets particularly tough for workers. With nationalist rhetoric of mainstream politicians, racist ideas being toyed with by Labour and Liberal local councillors, and a land where, for instance, the Minister for Education advocates that the Union Jack be unfurled from every school roof in the land, vicious racism is only one goose-step away.

The arguments against racism must be put on radio phone-in programmes, in local and national newspaper letters columns, in public debates, pubs and and during doorstep canvassing. But the only effective arguments against this ugly and recurrent feature of capitalism are those which are truly socialist. Not those quasi socialist SWP banalities which end with an embarrassed instruction "vote Labour with no illusions" at the next general election. It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation. Racism is born from the poverty and nationalistic tensions of capitalism; there is no such thing as a successful campaign against racism within capitalism. That this is so is testified to by the reemergence of racism with all its terrors after it had risen and then fallen in the 1970s. The Anti-Nazi League rather unbelievably claim that racism failed in the 1970s because it was stymied by the might of university students with yellow badges chanting to Clash songs in parks. The truth is that most National Front supporters or potential voters were absorbed into the Conservative Party, specially after Mrs Thatcher assured them all in a speech in 1979 that (a) she would not tolerate our culture being "swamped" by foreigners and (b) that unlike the relatively small and shabby NF, she had the power and real prospect of putting her prejudices into action.

The growth of racism will not be broken with brute force, only bones and hope will become fractured in such a fight. In open public debate, the ignorance and bigotry behind the arguments of racism can be easily exposed, at which point support disperses more quickly than the queue at the door of the surgeon who is exposed as an unqualified impostor with a penchant for learn-as-you-go quackery.

Gary Jay

Blogger's Note:

". . . It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation."

I looked for a correction in a later issue of the Socialist Standard, but I couldn't see one. The Labour Party wasn't in government in 1962. The legislation referred to from 1962 was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act which was a piece of legislation which ". . . entailed stringent restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the United Kingdom."  The Labour Party in opposition, led by Hugh Gaitskell, opposed the 1962 Act.

What legislation Gary Jay was perhaps thinking of was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968, which was a piece of legislation passed under Wilson's Labour Government. This was denounced in the pages of the Socialist Standard at the time as piece of racist legislation:

• April 1968: Labour's New Race Law by Adam Buick
• April 1968: 'Prejudice and Pride' by Ivan

Lewisham and free speech (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nineteen thirties were resurrected on 13th August, when the fascist National Front held a march through Lewisham in south London. This area was selected by them because it has a high proportion of black people. The march was claimed to be a protest against mugging, and carried placards which said: “80 per cent of muggers are black, 85 per cent of victims are white”. Implication obvious.

Opposition to the march was organized by the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the result was an afternoon of violence with 214 arrests and 110 people taken to hospital. There was further violence in Birmingham, where the National Front had a candidate in a by-election, and several indiscriminate attacks in London. The SPGB was among the objects of it. Though we oppose both the National Front and the Socialist Workers’ Party and condemn everything which happened in Lewisham, the front window of our premises was smashed by a brick on 16th August.

The question raised is of democracy. Should the National Front be tolerated when they are preaching intolerance? Why cede free speech to them when everything known about them indicates that their aim is to suppress free speech? In the same terms, is there any justification for the Socialist Workers’ Party trying to prevent forcibly the expression of views they object to? The word “fascist” is both definite and indefinite; in the early ’thirties the Communist Party used “social fascist” as a self-granted licence to break up any opponent party’s meetings, and the SWP and its predecessor International Socialists have done the same.

The SWP produced two curious arguments. First, Paul Foot was quoted in The Times (15th August) as saying 98 per cent. of his party are against violence. Since the SWP now claim 4,500 members, this means only 90 support violence and 4.400 are against it. In a democratically-run party a minority accepts the view of the majority. Why are not these 90 expelled from the party? Second, Duncan Hallas said on TV (18th August) the National Front is outside the rules because “it is not a political party”. That is absurd. A political party is a group which aims to win or participate in control of the state machine, and that is the nature of the NF.

The SPGB’s attitude is quite clear. We are against violence as a political means because it denies democracy; we are for the expression of views, however pernicious they are considered to be. The way to defeat the National Front is to expose its policies fully (most of its supporters either do not know or do not understand them). The SWP and others play into its hands by seeking to make superior force the issue. It is not a matter of “should be allowed”. That means, again, some forcibly superior body — in this case the government — deciding what views may or may not be expressed. Most people take it as a question of “right” and “wrong”, but governments do not act on ethics.

The legal “rights” of free speech, publication, assembly and voting are permissions given by the state for historically or immediately practical reasons. They can be withdrawn, as has happened many times and is suggested now; The Times had an editorial on 15th August saying the citizens should not mind losing “these nebulous rights” in the interests of public order. Socialists understand the value of these facilities which capitalism has to allow, and at the same time see them in perspective. We link democracy with Socialism, as an essential of the means for a democratic society to be established.

Democracy depends on knowledge, and that is why we are for all views being expressed, questioned and debated. We do not, however, join with non-Socialists to demand legal rights for them as a stepping-stone to run capitalism. Under existing conditions it is always possible for the bully or would-be tyrant to use democratic procedures which he wants to stamp out. Why should we help them? The application of democracy in the true sense, as part of the demand for Socialism, is the only realistic way to deal with fascism—and all the other evils produced by capitalism.

A related matter is the myth which has grown up round the “Battle of Cable Street” in 1936. Here, the Communist Party and other groups organized opposition to a march by the British Union of Fascists; the street was barricaded, there was fighting, and the BUF leader Mosley agreed to divert his march. This has led to the legend that the fascists were defeated, and the SWP today are trying to emulate it. In fact the fascists marched again in East London, and continued their activity and contested elections until the outbreak of war in 1939. According to Martin Walker in The National Front they gained about 2,000 members in the East End in the two months after the battle of Cable Street.

Finally, it should be noted where the National Front gets its support. Its policies apart from racism are a miserable ragbag which would not in themselves elicit votes on any useful scale. But, like the Nazis and other fascist parties which have won political power, in a depression it attracts workers who are discontented and misdirect their resentment — and, in particular, think parliamentary democracy has been no good to them. The rise of fascism since the first World War is due above all to the failure of the social-democratic parties who consciously rejected Socialism. The policies and activities of the SWP do nothing to alter that.

Robert Barltrop

New pamphlet on racism (1966)

Party News from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is published this month. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St, London, SW4. Price 1/6.

The Passing Show: South African Realities (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

South African Realities

Anyone who doubts the validity of the Socialist interpretation of events in South Africa — that what we are seeing is the emergence of a new capitalist class, together with the corresponding proletariat, in a country still ruled by the landowners — would do well to look at The Times Supplement on South Africa, which appeared on May 31st. Valuable figurcs are given to back up the verdict that “during the 50 years of the Union, South Africa has developed from a pastoral country into a modern industrial state,” and that the last two decades have witnessed “unprecedented industrial growth.” Steel production, for example, has increased a hundredfold in twenty-five years. The total gross value of the output of South Africa's manufacturing industries has gone up from £40 million in 1915-16 to £1,424 million in 1955-56, thirty-five times as much. Even allowing for inflation, there is still obviously a gigantic increase here.

As the Supplement puts it, “it has become clear that new policies and fundamental changes in attitude are necessary if rapid industrial growth is to be continued into the next half century.” This means, of course, that the policies of the capitalists will have to replace the policies of the landowners. The justification for this is to be found in that favourite phrase of the capitalists, “economic realities.” The Supplement says:

At this time political issues completely overshadow economics in any assessment of the future—the key question being whether government policies will be in harmony with economic realities (industry’s complete reliance on a stable, settled, urban non-white labour force) or whether there will be further attempts to impose on industry racial policies that will increasingly undermine productivity and progress. . . . It has now become quite clear to industrialists that South Africa can realize its great potential and its ambitions to become the “workshop of Africa” only if a contented and stable labour force is built up and if existing barriers to productivity are removed. . . . Industry itself is now beginning to recognize what this means in terms of housing, social welfare and minimum wages, and the need to encourage the emergence of a property-owning African middle class with a stake in maintaining social stability.

It would be hard to improve on these quotations as a statement of the aims and ambitions of the South African capitalist class at the present time. The capitalists now dominate the South African economy: how long will it be before they dominate South Africa politically?—especially since capitalism dominates all the other “civilized” countries of the world. Well, they themselves are optimistic. As the Supplement sums up: “South African industrialists are confident that economic realities will prevail and that a new and constructive approach to the problems of growth in a multi-racial society will emerge.”

Race Hate

The fascist British Union Movement has been distinguishing itself again, this time when some of its members followed an American Negro comedian along the street, shouting abuse at him from a loudspeaker van. There have been some indignant comments on the incident from those who consider themselves left-wingers. No doubt these protests are sincere, but they are illogical. For the capitalist system breeds race hatred. Only in the last twenty years we have seen the ruling classes of various countries, whenever it was in their own interests, whipping up hatred of the Jews, the Germans, the British, the Russians, the Americans, and many more. From time to time every capitalist country goes to war, and needs the working class to kill and be killed in defence of its masters’ profits. The official propagation of race hatred is one of the means inevitably used to lash the workers into the necessary frame of mind. So that people who oppose racialism and at the same time support capitalism (private or state) are merely defeating their own ends.

In the meantime Mosley’s fascists demonstrate the gentlemanly standards of the “white civilisation” they claim to be defending, by hurling insults at a foreign visitor in the open street.

Mutual Help Society

From The Times (9-6-60):

The Institute of Directors have accepted an invitation from the State Scientific and Technical Committee of the U.S.S.R. to send a goodwill and fact-finding mission to Russia to study problems of Soviet industrial management.

Sir Richard Powell, Director-General of the Institute of Directors, said that the mission is “an attempt to get an overall picture of top Russian management policy in industry and commerce. . . . It should prove a unique opportunity for high ranking British businessmen to see their Russian counterparts at work.” 

Without question the ruling class of Russia and the ruling class of Britain could help each other a great deal by showing each other how they run their respective businesses, and keep their respective working classes in order. Although capitalism in Britain is still largely private, while in Russia it is state-run, nevertheless the two economic systems are the same in every important respect. The “high-ranking British business men” and their “Russian counterparts” will have a great deal in common. We look forward to the day when the British and Russian working classes will co-operate in the establishment of Socialism, just as today our masters collaborate for the better running of capitalism.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Where We Stand (1965)

Editorial from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists advocate a world where the whole of humanity is united about social relationships of equality and co-operation. The identity of the Socialist even now is not with any national grouping, brand of religion, any alleged “race” or local culture. The Socialist has no loyalties to Britain or America, to Protestantism or Catholicism, to white men or brown men, to Welsh culture or African culture. By his perspective of history, by his knowledge of the economic nature of modern society, the Socialist has gone beyond the shallow allegiances that misdirect the attitudes of those who are still burdened by nationalism, religion or racism. Our argument is that if the majority were Socialists, the security of all men in material comfort in a world of harmony and freedom would at last become a reality.

It is true that the world picture of racism at present is gloomy; it is a running sore of a problem, frequently accompanied by outbursts of physical violence. Apart from its form as widespread prejudice, in some parts of the world it is still maintained as official government policy. Although it is the product of different historical conditions, and although up to now the South African Government has not begun to build gas chambers, apartheid is in direct descent from the Gestapo’s “final solution”. Racism may be dormant in Hamburg, but its ugliness has reappeared in Smethwick and Netting Hill.

Socialists have no hesitation in taking a stand. We condemn racism. To us it is repugnant. We are opposed to any attitude that discourages the unity of the working class. Even so, our disgust is extended by an understanding of the problem. Disgust without knowledge is impotent. The racists of Johannesburg, Salisbury, Birmingham Alabama or Birmingham, England, are not inherently evil men. They are men who are moved by fear, insecurity, frustration and ignorance, all of which are attitudes conditioned by social forces. The working class of Smethwick have a social history of struggle and insecurity. They are on the defensive, they are anxious to protect jobs, a standard of living, a standard of housing, that they feel has been hard won. Mere condemnation will not help them. They have to realise that they are victims of a universal situation that impinges on members of the working class wherever they exist.

What workers really want, whether they hail from Jamaica, Pakistan or Smethwick is the security of material comfort. This cannot be achieved by engaging in racist struggles that only add hatred and the nightmare of strife and violence to enduring frustrations. They must realise that they are denied this because the means of wealth production and distribution are owned by a minority class, who exploit this ownership and the labour power of the workers for the purpose of profit making.

All workers, whatever their skill and capability, have a common identity and a common interest not as Jamaicans, Pakistanis or Brummies, but as members of the working class. Their common problems can only be resolved, not by squalid differences between themselves, but by a confrontation between a united working class and the owners of the means of wealth production – the capitalist class.

The world’s workers must destroy this private monopoly of the means of wealth production and convert it to the common property of the whole of man. Only then can social integration, co-operation, equality and freedom be realised where it really matters, in the production and distribution of wealth, in meeting the world community’s material requirements.

Socialists will continue to show that there are no differences between men that prevent the establishment of a society where the human family can live in harmony and co-operation. We shall continue to show that “race” is a myth, that racism is sterile hysteria containing much that is painfully disrupting and nothing that is of material advantage to the working class. Racism is at war with everything that Socialists want.

The Roots of Race Prejudice (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is all too easy to discover examples of man clinging passionately to ideas which have no basis in fact. One of the most widespread of these ideas at the moment is racial prejudice, a term which conceals a multitude of aberrations all of them based on the notion that some people, in some way, are innately inferior to others.

This comes in different forms at different times. Before the war, when the Nazis were at their work, it took the form of intense anti-Semitism. This was then one of the most prevalent types of racial prejudice, and it was fearfully simple. The Nazis decided that the Jews were less than human and were, therefore, proper subjects for bestial experiments and finally mass extermination. Himmler, for example, put it like this to a gathering of his S.S. generals at Posen in 1943:

Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness.

No evidence worthy of the name was ever produced to support statements like that, any more than any was ever produced to support their corollary, that there was an innately superior type of person—a fair haired, blue eyed so-called Aryan—who was destined to rule the world. (Only one or two of the top Nazi leaders bore the faintest resemblance to their own idea of racial perfection:) But the gas chambers did not need evidence and rational thought to feed them; they lived on the evil fruits of barbarous prejudices.

In the same way, there is no proper evidence to support the racial theory which is now most prevalent—colour prejudice. Not so long ago, people in this country thought that violent colour discrimination was confined to places like South Africa and the United States, and could not happen here. The influx of coloured immigrants over the past twelve years or so, working its own type of aggravation on the problems of housing, employment and so on, has shown how false was this comfortable notion.

This is not to say that Smethwick is the same as, or indeed anything like, Selma. Nowhere in this country is there a tradition of militancy to compare with that of the American South. People in, for example, Alabama and Mississippi assert their prejudices in defiance of the law, yet they escape the law’s reprisals, which is something yet to happen in Great Britain. The conspiracy in the South is to all intents and purposes complete; it often includes the very people who are supposed to enforce the law. It includes the sheriffs and their deputies and the legal officers of the states.

In a letter to The Guardian of April 14th, 1960, a Judge Jones of Burke County, Georgia, revealed his thinking on the colour question:

Freely admitting that the number of our Negro voters is relatively small, we believe that this is due to the ignorance and indifference of the Negroes themselves rather than to any present policy of disfranchisement. 

Judge Jones described himself as “a friend sympathetic to the Negroes ”: it would be interesting to know whether he now thought the obstacles put in the way of the Negroes who tried to register to vote in Selma amount to a “ policy of disfranchisement ” or not.

In any case, it is this sort of stonewalling which helps to keep the Negroes deprived of their vote, their chance of employment on equal terms with the whites, the legal right to eat, or ride a bus. alongside a white person. And in the end, if the Negro refuses to accept an inferior social status, it sometimes deprives him of his life.

It is as well to say a word here about the laws, such as the Civil Rights Bill, which the Southerners defy. Many people think that these laws were inspired by humane motives. In fact, they were passed because American capitalism needs them. One of capitalism’s achievements was to make labour power free to move from one place of employment to another, as the prospects of profit require. But the archaic prejudices which are responsible for the Confederate flag being still flown above the Capital in Montgomery, Alabama want to enslave, and therefore restrict the freedom of, the labour power which is in coloured bodies.

Capitalism’s interests demand that it should not be concerned about skin colour; it wants to exploit all its workers at maximum intensity. At the same time, capitalism hates waste which depletes its profits—and having things like transport systems, hospitals and living areas divided into white and coloured is mightily wasteful. The Civil Rights, laws are designed to eliminate, or at least to lessen, all of this and to open up further fields of exploitation for American capitalism.

When the Southern racists defy United States law, then, they are ignoring the needs of the very social system they so ardently support. But capitalism is a ruthless system; it will not be denied by a crackpot minority who cling to the nostalgias of the Civil War and to the divisive theories of the Confederacy. It seems certain that the Klansmen will be forced into a sullen acceptance of integration. The Negroes will have the vote, and the other rights for which they are now demonstrating. But will they also develop their own delusions and prejudices, and at election times support, with the votes so clearly won, the system which exploits and degrades them? If they do, somebody is sure to call this progress.

Before that happens there is a long, hard road of brutality to be travelled. The Southern rebels are representing ideas sprung from the roots of an earlier social system, and such attitudes do not die easily. They will not quickly abandon their prejudices, especially as long as they can assert them in violence. (There is a chilling echo of Himmler’s words in this extract from Ku-Klux-Klan literature which was circulating in Mississippi last Summer: “Race mixing is more criminal than murder.”) 

The demonstrations, also, will continue; the Civil Rights workers have shown that they are not easily broken. These workers are doubtless confused, not to say ignorant, on many issues; they are certainly not Socialists; the end of their campaign will at best deliver the Negro from one type of suppression into another. It is easy enough to write this, in comfortable London. But it does not obscure the impressive courage of many of the Civil Rights workers—of the three young men who were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., nor of those who were killed in the Selma marches, nor of the many others who have suffered in the Negro cause.

Compared to these people, the white racists are a poor lot. The novels of James Baldwin make the point that those who erect racial prejudices are themselves lowered by it. The many people who endured the concentration camps, and kept their dignity, were infinitely more mature and complete human beings than the insane brutes who tormented them.

The one hope in this is to be found in examining the reasons for racial prejudices. Capitalism rests upon the ignorance and the apathy of its people. It requires only a few to be sensitive and learned; the mass are expected and encouraged to absorb only as much knowledge as will fit them into their place in the routine of exploitation. Capitalism promotes a ruthless competitive urge, and all manner of conceits, It instils nationalism into the working class, and it sets its own example by living out its disputes in violence. Periodically, capitalism glorifies brutality—it makes heroes of military murderers, it ennobles the men who organise the mass killings of wartime.

In this situation, one type of ignorance begets another even one like racial prejudice, which capitalism generally finds a nuisance. But popular ignorance has its own momentum. The most recent example of this is the way in which the Labour Party has been forced to pander to electoral realities by imposing even stricter immigration controls than the Conservatives did. (It was, after all, Labour voters who changed their votes in Smethwick, on the issue of immigration control.) This has been done despite the bitter attacks which the Labour Party made on the original controls, and despite the fact that Mr. Wilson is still strongly condemning racial discrimination:

. . . we have a duty at home to show our deep loathing and to condemn by our words, and to outlaw by our deeds, racial intolerance, colour prejudice, anti-Semitism . . .

Those words were spoken at last November’s Lord Mayor’s banquet. Perhaps everybody there was too full of over-ripe pheasant to reflect that Mr. Wilson, like the other political leaders of capitalism, is after the votes of workers who are politically ignorant, and who are therefore easy prey to any rabble-rousing race maniac Mr. Wilson wants the support of people who, although they react against problems like bad

housing, unemployment, inadequate hospitals, have not the first idea of how to abolish them—and who cannot hope for enlightenment from Mr. Wilson's party. They are, therefore, liable to blame such problems onto anything or anybody. At the moment, many British workers are inclined to blame the influx of foreign, and especially coloured, immigrants. This, in its way, is no more foolish than the Labour Government blaming the financial crises of British captalism onto foreign financiers.

The roots of racial intolerance are now stirring in this country, and it is disturbing to reflect that they may yet blossom into the same sort of malignant growth as disfigured pre-war Germany, and which went on to transform the greater part of Europe into a paradise for sadistic thugs. Racial theories divide the working class and set them against each other. They deny the unity of workers’ interests, which overrides all barriers of nation, skin colour, language, and which joins all workers everywhere in the need for Socialism.

In some ways, the human race now resembles a blind, wounded beast, picking its way over a wilderness of smouldering ignorance. But human beings have eyes to see, and they are whole. There is massive hope in those who hang on and work for enlightenment, for the day when man ceases to wander like a tormented beast and starts to live like a man.

Ivan.