News in Review: Two classes (1963)

The News in Review column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

Two classes

We are still, the government anxiously assured the voters in the recent by-elections, living in the Age of Affluence. Very well. As the Conservatives promise that their new government will bring in a more vital, more prosperous Britain, as the Labour Party bid for our votes with a vision of this country as a vast test-tube, what is the latest from the poverty and riches front?

The Co-operative Permanent Building Society reported that half the people who buy homes through them earn less than twenty pounds a week and that a quarter earn less than sixteen pounds a week. Two-thirds of the houses bought through the Co-op. cost less than £3,000. Anyone who has lowered himself into the perilous pit of working class house ownership will appreciate what these figures mean in terms of size and quality of houses and of struggle to pay off the loan on them. House owners are supposed to be among the most affluent of the working class but the Co-op's report shows that none of them live in a castle and that buying a house relieves nobody of the usual working class battle to get by.

Housing of another sort cropped in one more of those conferences—this time of the National Housing and Town Planning Council. Dr. Eric M. Sigsworth, lecturer in economic history at the University of York, said that there will be three million unfit houses or slums in this country by 1973. Now this is after the promised speed up in slum clearance. Perhaps they would clear more if they slowed down?

Many workers think that the road out of poverty, bad housing and the like, is one of loyal obedience to their employer. Among other firms, the Ford Motor Company have encouraged this idea. They give silver and gold badges to the men who have done long service, and who have kept essential machinery going when there was a strike on. They also give these men certain staff and pension privileges. But Fords are now in the midst of another efficiency drive and what account does that take of loyalty? The drive has meant that four of the gold and silver badge men have been sent back to the factory floor, which means that they have been demoted and that they have lost their privileges. If they did not like the way the company was repaying their long service, the lour men could have accepted dismissal. Which must have caused some hard, rueful, thinking in the loyal heads of Dagenham.

Everything very normal, in other words, for the working class. Nothing changing, either, for their social betters. The will of Sir George Usher, an industrialist who died last October, showed that he was worth over £2 million at the end of his life. Each of his sons inherited over a million pounds which must have come from somebody's hard work, but not theirs.

The Finance Accounts for the United Kingdom 1962-3 showed that it is still a paying business to be a figurehead for British capitalism. Annuities paid to the Royal Family amounted to £166,000 during the year. Not bad for reading out speeches which somebody else has written for you, shaking hands and generally doing as you are told.

Will the household budgets of any readers of the Socialist Standard be affected by the increase in the fees of Eton? Anyway, it is instructive to hear about them and to ask whether every child really has the equal chance in education the politicians are always promising. Eton has gone up to £554 a year. If you can't run to that you can try for Harrow or Winchester (both £498) or Charterhouse (£492). Or there is always the local Council Primary, which costs a little less and has other differences besides.

Getting to know you

It is a common fallacy that a Minister who is familiar with the problems which his department has to deal with is able to solve them that much more easily. And, of course, it gives a boost to people's morale if a Minister appears in their midst, looks at their conditions and clicks his tongue in sympathy. They forget that when he gets back to Whitehall he is so often quite powerless to do anything about the conditions.

So it has come about that successive Ministers of Housing have always made an early tour of the worst of the slums as if looking at them would make the slums go away instead of increasing, as they in fact do. And so it was that Lord Hailsham (as he then was), when he was put in charge of the unemployment problem in the North East, went straight off to tour the area—cloth cap and all. But any personal experience which Hailsham might have gained about the North East was wasted, because Douglas-Home replaced him with Edward Heath.

Now Mr. Heath is supposed to be a very astute man. Did he, then, abandon the pretence about the usefulness of a personal appearance? One of his first appointments was to fly off to the North East to see for himself what unemployed men and their families, and idle shipyards and factories, look like.

Labour and the TSR2

One of the latest babies of British capitalism, proudly wheeled out by its doting parents, is the TSR-2.

This aircraft, it is claimed, can do almost anything by way of airborne destruction. In its ability to perform the most horrifying deeds, in the range of its destructive power, in its diabolical versatility, the TSR-2 is something like a precocious, delinquent child.

These horrors are going to cost something like a couple of million pounds each. Commenting on this, Mr. Denis Healey, the Labour M.P. (who put the cost at £20 million each), asked what this sum represented in terms of schools, hospitals, and so on. This is a common complaint, whenever the amount of money which capitalism spends upon weapons is discussed. Yet what do the Healeys expect? Capitalism has a list of priorities to which it allocates its resources and human comfort is not near the top of it. This was as true under the Labour government which Mr. Healey supported as under the Tory one which he attacks.

Indeed, Mr. Healey showed how small are the differences between his own party and the Tories on the issue of armaments when he went on to say that the TSR-2 is a waste of money, which could better be spent on military helicopters and other transport aircraft and on the Buccaneer, a naval strike ’plane which is already in service.

The best, then, that the Labour Party offers us on the matter of armaments policy is to look after the purse strings more carefully than the Conservatives have done. They will try to make sure that every penny the British ruling class spend on their weapons gets value for money.

And perhaps they will succeed. Perhaps, under Labour, there will be no more Blue Streak fiascos. British capitalism will still have fearfully destructive armaments, the waste of human knowledge and resources will go on, but it will all be presided over by a Labour M mister of Defence who will make sure that it is done at the market price and not a penny over. Does this encourage us to believe the hypocritical Labour claim to stand for peace and progress? It does not.

Abroad

Guiana must wait

It was by something like a slick trick that Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys brought the recent British Guiana constitutional conference, which was supposed to discuss ways of granting the colony independence, to a close.

The British government has rejected the idea of early independence for British Guiana. Instead, another conference will take place after fresh elections next year. The significant thing about the election is that they will be run on a proportional representation scheme which will probably break up the present party groupings. At the last elections the Peoples' Progressive Party, led by Doctor Jagan, got 43 per cent. of the votes, but 60 per cent. of the seats, while the opposition Peoples' National Congress, with 41.5 per cent. of the votes, got just over 36 per cent. of the seats.

This sort of result is common in the direct electoral system which British Guiana, and this country, has worked to. The fact that Mr. Sandys thinks that proportional representation is a good idea for British Guiana does not mean that he is thinking about advocating the same thing for Great Britain. The two big British parties do too well out of the present system for that.

The latest Sandys plan was, bluntly, a tongue-in-the-cheek trick lo impose Whitehall's own wishes upon British Guyana. Dr. Jagan described it as “ dastardly and unprincipled," which is just the expression which other people might have used about the Doctor's own action last year, when he called in British troops to suppress a rising in the colony.

In spite of Jagan's fulminating, the people of British Guiana seemed to have taken the news quietly. It would be good news indeed if this meant that they have come to understand that capitalism is full of diplomatic double-crossing and that in any case the Guianese working people have no more to hope for from independence than they had under British rule.

Sadly, this is unlikely at the present.

Jews in Russia

From the Soviet Union comes more indications of the recent trend there of persecution of the Jews.

The latest example comes in the October 20 edition of Izvestia which reports, and comments, upon the alleged crimes of a number of men but most prominently upon two called Shakerman and Roifman, both of whom are Jews.

These men are accused of embezzlement and bribery, of setting up a profitable racket in the produce of State factories and farms. The full story reminds us of the vast enterprise of Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22; they are said to nave been running a knitwear factory which embezzled machinery and with wool which they had diverted from collective farms. The produce, say the prosecution, was sold on the black market.

Izvestia is furious about these allegations, and raves that the men had amassed thirty million roubles in cash and a hundredweight of gold, diamonds and platinum. The paper has also assumed that the accused are guilty before their trial is complete.

Whether these men are criminals or not, there is mounting evidence of a campaign in Russia to use the Jews as scapegoats to excuse the country’s recent economic difficulties. This is a nasty subterfuge which has often been used in the past. Ignorant workers who are suffering the brunt of capitalism's problems are usually only too ready to blame some racial or religious minority for their troubles.

There need, then, be no surprise that this is happening in Russia. In any case, how is it that economic crimes arc possible in a country which is supposed to be Socialist? How can a country where everyone stands equally offer the chance for a criminal to amass enormous wealth while the rest of the people suffer hunger and other hardships? How can a society where wealth is owned in common have any sort of a market, black or white?

It is impossible to answer these questions, and to explain anti-Semitism in Russia, unless we face the facts. The Soviet Union is not a Socialist country—even supposing that such a thing as Socialism in one country were possible. It is a capitalist country and one where precious little democracy exists at that.

When we have got that straight, every thing else about the USSR falls neatly into place.

Business

Investment, profit, wages

The big mergers in Top Industry continue. Imperial Chemical Industries, who last May put up £10 million with Courtaulds to finance the acquisition of Tootal, have now lashed out another £13 million on Viyella International Ltd. Viyella have interests in spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing.

Viyella were not planning on any big capital investment in the near future but will obviously be able to use ICI’s money. ICI are probably interested in Viyella’s use of synthetic fibres, which now account for about half of its business. Industry is always seeking for ways of safeguarding its interests, but capitalism upsets its plans. Even a giant like ICI is no exception to this.

J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., the teashop firm, is another in the merger field. Its latest venture is in frozen food, the home market for which is estimated to be worth about 72 million a year.

Lyons are tying up their frozen food branch (Frood) with that of Associated Fisheries (Eskimo) and Union International (Fropax). This merger, it is hoped, will result in a combine which will initially command 16 per cent. of the market.

The move is presumably aimed against Unilever’s Birds Eye group, which at present claims two-thirds of the British retail market.

Capitalism is described, by its defenders. as an efficient social system. Yet it would be dillicult for them to find anything efficient or beneficial in the waste of the continual war which rival companies must carry on against each other over the carve up of a market.

The object of it all is, of course, bigger and bigger profits. A company which has succeeded in this past many expectations is Marks and Spencers, which since the war has been transformed from a rather dull chain store group into a bright, hard selling, and very profitable, concern. The very epitome, with its staff welfare schemes and its split second, split penny operation, of a “progressive’’ capitalist company.

The sales of M&S rose to £95.5 millions in the six months up to September this year. This was a record and with the Christmas rush to come, sales are expected to reach £200 million for the year —for the first time in the company’s history. To mark the occasion, shareholders got an extra 1¼ per cent, on their interim dividend.

And what about the people who make these sales, and mergers, and profits, possible? What do they get out of it? The wages of the working class are a constant worry to their employers, for the simple reason that higher wages mean lower profits, and vice versa.

That is why governments are always trying to control wages. Usually this control is described by a smooth phrase which is meant to persuade the workers that their wages are not being held down, and that nobody is trying to do so. Some industrialists, although they recognise their need for wage restraint, think that it should be done more subtly than has been the case in the past. This is what Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board, said on the subject when he spoke at last month’s Annual Conference of the Institute of Directors:

Whether we like it or not, the most sensitive spot in all our industrial relations is the size of Friday’s pay packet. That is why I deplore the continual use since the war of such phrases as "wage restraint,” "wage freeze,” and "pay pause" . . . .

A national productivity drive hasn't a hope of success if it is accompanied by phrases like that.

Their very sound puts a chill down a workman’s spine and they merely create ill-feeling and bitterness between management and men . . . 

Some sort of "guiding light” is essential if we are to rationalise the present chaos of wages settlement.

Inevitably, we must ask whether Lord Robens, when he was an M.P. supporting the 1945-51 Labour government—and later a member of that government—ever expressed so freely his dislike of the term ‘‘wage freeze”. He had plenty of chances too; it was the Labour government which invented it. Presumably, in the days when the Labour government was fighting to check wages, and using every euphemism in the book to do so, Alf Robens preferred to hold his peace.

Blogger's Note:

The aforementioned novel, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard by 'Ivan' (Ralph Critchfield).

Soviet Jews and emigration (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Russian annexation of Polish territory in 1654 gave Russia its first large-scale Jewish communities in towns like Minsk, Polatsk, Kiev, Brest and Vilkh. Other towns containing large numbers of Jewish inhabitants also came under the rule of the Tsar. Some years earlier in 1648 the Cossack leader Bogdon Chmielmicki led a revolt against the Polish gentry. After the defeat of the Polish army, his followers turned against the Jews; over 100,000 Jews were killed between 1648 and 1651, and others tortured and ill-treated This was the first large-scale massacre by the Cossacks. However, as early as 1545 Jewish goods from Poland were burnt in public, and Jews forbidden to enter Moscow. In 1563 Tsar Ivan IV ordered that all Jews who refused Christian baptism should be drowned. They were debarred in 1823 from owning land in White Russia by Tsar Alexander, and from following certain trades, and subject to immediate deportation and repeated pogroms. The word pogrom is Russian for a violent attack carried out against a section of the community.

Under the laws of 1793, Jews were mainly confined to the Pale of Settlement—an area which stretched from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, to Kalisz and Warsaw in the west and Chennigoy in the east. Even within the Pale of Settlement certain towns would only admit Jews as a special privilege. By 1897 there were more than 5 million Jews in the Pale, and a further 322,000 living outside. Moscow had 9,000; St. Petersburg 21,000; Krarkov 14,000 (official figures 1897).

In the population census of 1970 (before the emigration campaign) the number of Jews living within the USSR, excluding Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, was 2,150,707—less than 1 per cent of the population and twelfth in size of the 104 USSR nationalities listed (Insight No. 7, “Soviet Jews,” Oct. 1975).

In 1917 the Bolshevik revolution nominally removed many of the disadvantages suffered by the Jews, including the abolition of the Pale of Settlement. However, the pogroms re-commenced and continued until the outbreak of World War II. With the death of Stalin these were halted and the persecution of the Jews changed its violent character. It has instead become a political weapon in the present Russian government’s dealings with American capitalism and the US satellite in the east—the Jewish State of Israel, proclaimed as the Jewish national home.

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 gave fresh impetus to the Zionist movement everywhere, including Russia, but significantly the wealthier Jews, British, American and Russian, are not in too great a hurry to take advantage of it. All Jews are not Zionists; on the contrary. Zionism has the appeal of a happy land far far away, an appeal which becomes stronger as the economic and social conditions of Zionists in other parts of the world become worse. Undoubtedly the Soviet government consistently refuses to advance Soviet Jewish culture. The teaching of Yiddish is not encouraged. In fact, only 25 per cent. of the Jewish population speak Yiddish; 44 per cent., mostly women, being over the age of 60 and 75 per cent. over the age 40. (Insight, No. 8, Oct. 1975). Religious ceremonies such as circumcision require special permits. There are no longer any exclusively Jewish schools and practically no Jewish newspapers. The Russian government openly discourages Jewish culture (although a large number of Jews are following the footsteps of their British and American counterparts, where religious practices are observed only by a small number of orthodox Jews).

Since 1970 when the agitation for Jews to emigrate to Israel commenced, until 1977, approximately 5 per cent of Jews (118,000) left the Soviet Union, and a further 55,000 were waiting for visas in 1976. (The Jews of Russia, Martin Gilbert.) The rate of permits granted was 14,200 a year (National Council for Soviet Jewry circular, Feb. 1977).

Of those who emigrated since 1970, many went elsewhere. Some actually returned to the Soviet Union. The campaign for emigration which is promoted both by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the National Council for Soviet Jewry, is a demand not for the right of Jews to emigrate to any country of their choice, but that they should emigrate to Israel. The promised land has lost much of its attraction for Soviet Jews. The Yom Kippur war, compulsory military service for men and women, inflation, low wages and rising prices, and all the familiar problems of capitalism, are present in Israel. In addition, constant threat of war with the Arab states has placed the Israeli economy on a regular war footing, and it is anything but a secure and permanent home. According to an article in The Times (12th May 1977), of the Jews who left Russia in 1974, 20 per cent. sought destinations other than Israel. The following year the proportion rose above 50 per cent., and in April 1977 it increased to 70 per cent.

One of the drawbacks which future emigrants will have to face is the prospect of being deprived of financial assistance by the international Jewish organizations if their final destination is not Israel. The view of the Chief Rabbi of Rumania, Dr. Moses Rosen, is that it is Judaism that is threatened, and that emigrants should only go to Israel where they can lead Jewish lives. They should emigrate for “spiritual” not economic reasons, otherwise they should not be helped by Jewish public funds (The Times, 12th May 1977.) This will obviously affect the poorer Jews. Even if a visa is granted the Soviet government charge 900 roubles (£1,000) for every member of the emigrating family. This is a severe financial burden, and goes some way to explaining why only 7½ per cent of Russian Jews attempt to emigrate. A well-qualified professional Soviet citizen receives 160 roubles a month, and this is considered to be a good salary. In fact a number of Russian Jews who have settled in Israel want to move on elsewhere.

A further complicating factor is that despite the freedom of movement of Soviet citizens proclaimed under the Soviet Constitution, Russian workers whether Jewish or not are not permitted to emigrate, and the Soviet government claims to be making a special concession in the case of the Jews. Like all capitalist governments it does not wish to see its skilled labour force seek higher wages and better working conditions abroad. In this they are following the pattern set by the British government in the anti-Combination Laws of 1799-1824, which forbade the emigration of skilled workers in addition to prohibiting the formation of trade unions. For all practical purposes the Russian equivalent of the Combination Laws is still in force. Fear of opening the door to mass emigration lies behind the reticence of the Soviet government to allow unrestricted emigration of Jews. Also it is against the interests of Russian capitalism to help to build up present Israeli capitalism and its USA parent by allowing highly skilled workers to emigrate to these countries. Russian Jewish workers are no exception to the general rule prevailing within wage labour and capital relations. Dominated by the need to get a living in the only way workers can, by selling their labour-power, they will seek the best terms and social conditions for employment. Migration is part of the history of the working class. Workers have come and gone to all corners of the world in their attempts to find work and peace. Some countries refuse them entry, others refuse them exits. The Jewish workers are looking for the philosopher’s stone if they are looking for ideal conditions abroad.

Like any other workers, they cannot continue to live in the past, and must play their part in the removal of religious, nationalist and racial prejudice and the creation of a world in which there are no restrictions on people—freedom in the fullest sense of the word. Freedom from the domination of capital and wage labour; freedom from want, and freedom to extend the latent productive capacity which exists, and of course, freedom of movement. Socialism embraces all of these. Control of the world must be removed from the capitalists and the system abolished. This is the task of a class-conscious working class who are not divided amongst themselves on the basis of nationality, race, religion or sex.

Jim D'Arcy

Sting in the Tail: None So Blind (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

None So Blind

Whenever outbreaks of racial, ethnic or religious intolerance occurred in America or Western Europe, supporters of the "communist" dictatorships would claim that none of these evils could happen in "the socialist countries" because their governments, through education, had eradicated them.

These governments had, after all, exclusive use of the education system and the media for decades, so surely this, together with their avowed opposition to such evils, should have succeeded in at least reducing them.

Every day we can see the awful reality: anti-semitism, national, ethnic and religious hatreds are rife in all the so-called "socialist countries" and have even produced minor wars in some of them.

Of course the dictatorships had never even tried to remove the old divisions but had merely kept the lid on them. These divisions persist because the conditions which spawned them — ignorance, poverty and insecurity — remain, and this was something those supporters of the state capitalist dictatorships couldn't or wouldn't see.

Noble Toady

Lord Woodrow Wyatt has complained in the House of Lords about political bias by "left-wing" TV programme makers.

But what about Tory Was in the press? As was pointed out in the same debate, Rupert Murdoch owns 35% of the national press and no one can say his papers aren't biased.

Wyatt didn't complain about THAT because, you see, he is a columnist (The Voice of the People) in the News of the World which is owned by — Rupert Murdoch!

Ridiculous Ridley

The political demise of Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will leave all socialists dry eyed. He was the usual brand of arrogant Tory so beloved of the Prime Minister. His political departure, seen from the perspective of a socialist, is of no importance whatsoever to the working class.

What is of interest to socialists in the Ridley resignation is the background which led to it. Mr. Ridley, after what would appear to have been too good a lunch, spouted his ridiculous nonsense Into the tape recorder of the editor of The Spectator.

Even by arrogant Tory standards these were far from diplomatic musings:

This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe. It has to be thwarted. This risked takeover by the Germans on the worst possible basis, with the French behaving like poodles to the Germans, Is absolutely intolerable . . . I'm not against giving up sovereignty on principle, but not to this lot. You might as well give in to Adolf Hitler.

To the suggestion of The Spectator that if these were his views would he consider resignation he replied:

I've been in office for 14 years. I've been elected to parliament six times. I’m still at the top of the political tree, and I'm not done yet.

It was once said by another political trickster that "A week is a long time In politics." And it has been proved to be the case for Mr. Ridley. His political tree has been chopped down, and politically he is most definitely done.

Society in Conflict

Good news for some in capitalism is usually bad news for others and we are reminded of this by ICI's decision to close its loss-making fertiliser business.

For example, as fertilisers have lost £39 million in the last four years, then ICI's shareholders can hope for bigger dividends in future.

Against that are the 640 workers who will lose their jobs. The "greens" will be happy as ICI's inorganic fertilisers are a major source of water pollution. But if any "greens" are among the sacked workers then they will hardly know whether to laugh or cry.

Incidentally, one of ICI's reasons for the closure, that farmers are simply using less fertiliser, greatly pleased one newspaper:

There can be few things more nonsensical than one farmer ladling fertiliser onto a field while the farmer next door is being paid a set-aside grant by the EEC to grow nothing.

(The Guardian 26 July)

We can thank The Guardian for unwittingly revealing another feature of capitalism — its anarchy of production.

Roads to Ruin

Socialists are always showing that capitalism is a wasteful, inefficient social system. A recent report in The Independent 16 August Illustrates our point very well.

A committee of MPs reporting to the Department of Transport on the state of Britain's roads was scathing on the constant need for these roads to be repaired.

Robert Sheldon, Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne and chairman of the committee, said: "The Romans built roads that lasted thousands of years. We build our roads and eight years later we have to start repairing them."

The construction of these roads goes out to tender and the cheapest quote gets the job. The construction companies all have shareholders who are only interested in one thing — profit. So it does not take a financial wizard to appreciate that like all profit-making businesses every effort will be made to cut costs.

The cheapest materials possible will be used. In order to cut labour costs all sorts of schemes will be devised to speed up the work, inevitably producing a sub-standard job.

The extent of this shoddy production is reflected in the staggering costs of repairs:

More than £1 billion a year is spent building new motorways, trunk roads and bridges. The report said the National Audit Office had identified 210 cases of premature defects, with total repair costs of £262 million.

In defending this waste of human effort Christopher Chope, Road and Transport Minister, inadvertently revealed the cause of the whole sorry mess.

You could build all the roads so that they would not need repairs for 60 years, but the cost would be so great it probably would not represent good value.

This type of reasoning is typical of the capitalist system. Motor cars are built that only last a few years, car ferries operate that turn turtle in the English Channel, aircraft are flying with fire hazardous fittings that could be replaced by safer materials. The catalogue is a long, depressing and often tragic one.

The Lively Corpse

Someone once wrote a blood-curling story about a murderer who couldn't get rid of the body. He burned it in a furnace, submerged it in acid, dumped it in a lake, cut it into pieces, but the corpse always returned. The murderer finally gave up and turned himself in after waking up one morning to find the thing in bed with him.

This tale reminds us of the exasperating resilience of something else that will not lie down — the class struggle.

Academics and politicians are forever assuring us that it is dead and yet it constantly turns up all over the world in the form of, for example, strikes and lock-outs.

Despite repressive laws and awesome state power ranged against them, workers have created trade unions in South Africa, Eastern Europe, South Korea, etc.

As long as capital and wage-labour exist then so must the class struggle and this is something which all those who would bury it cannot change.

Between the Lines: The Born Villain (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Born Villain

Is Nick Cotton trying to poison his mother? (EastEnders, BBCl. Tuesday and Thursday. 7.30pm). This is not the most significant question of the early 1990s. It is not like asking, Will the Russian Empire survive under Gorbachev or Will Germany re-unify or Will Dr Habgood become the new Archbishop of Cant. Less important maybe, but a lot more workers are concerned about the case of Nick Cotton.

Let us try to explain to readers who are used to only watching TV documentaries about pollution in the Ukraine or televised operas on BBC2. EastEnders is one of the most watched programmes in Britain. Millions of workers relate to the made-up goings-on in Albert Square with a passion which we socialists usually reserve for the Paris Commune. Dot Cotton is a familiar character in this soap opera She is the sort of woman that we have all encountered once, usually for too long. She invents illnesses to torment herself with, indulges in futile gossip and is a dedicated Christian. She is the sort of person that every soap opera needs. Her husband. Charlie, is a cockney ne'er-do-well: the sort of hapless proletarian dope one might expect to find in a George Gissing novel. Charlie is a petty-crook and adulterer and he makes Dot's life more miserable than it would otherwise be We are supposed to laugh at Charlie—the affable old rogue. Now, Dot and Charlie have a son called Nick. He is a villain. A real soap opera villain. A proletarian Flashman. The sort of lout who would have sharpened the knives for Reggie Kray in' the Sixties and carried the leaflets for the National Front in the 1970s. Where Charlie is pathetic. Nick is dangerous. Over the years Nick Cotton has served as the East Ender without a heart of gold—heartless, conscienceless, morally off the edge.

As we have pointed out in this column on previous occasions, EastEnders is essentially a twentieth-century version of a medieval morality play. Its function is to show the proles what is right and what is wrong and how it shall come to pass that wrongdoers shall perish. (In Coronation Street the adulterous thief, Alan Bradley, literally did perish—knocked down and killed by a Blackpool tram as he was about to murder Rita). Some weeks ago Nick Cotton returned to Albert Square after a lengthy absence at Her Majesty's Pleasure He returned at a time when the ever-miserable Dot was rather less miserable because she had just won a fortune in a local newspaper competition. (Documentaries about pollution in the Ukraine are so much easier to follow, for a start) Anyway, Nick returned.

The inhabitants of Albert Square were less than happy to see that this born villain had resurfaced. But there lies the question. Was Nick Cotton a born villain? Is anyone born to be anti-social? Nick claimed to have transformed his personality and been "born again". The street-wise locals were unconvinced. "Once a villain always a villain", concluded Pete Beale, the fruit stall-holder and moral philosopher. Well, to cut the story short—bearing in mind that your reviewer and several million others followed the saga for many weeks—it turned out that Nick Cotton was far from a changed being. In fact, his reason for returning to his mother was to poison her so that he could get her money. The details of this tedious plot are not important. But the message should not escape us: the conservative belief that leopards never change their spots. Rogues are just like that—it's in their genes or something. Capitalist ideology is obsessed with the illusion of innate evil. EastEnders has served to fuel a sense of popular cynicism which sustains that ideology and helps to prop up those old myths about human nature

Old Myths and Ancient Bigots

Last month saw the unelected Lords' decision to prevent the prosecution of the old Nazis who had taken refuge in Britain, and also we witnessed the sick activities of newer Nazis who desecrated a Jewish cemetery in North London, leaving swastikas behind as a mark of offence. Two TV programmes made it clear that such mindless racism is still alive and . . . kicking is the appropriate verb, it would seem.

In Russia the Jew-hating racists of Pamyat are spewing out their poison in the new atmosphere of glasnost. World in Action (ITV, 4 June. 8.30pm) showed how Jewish workers in Leningrad were being indiscriminately attacked by these fascists. One boy in a Leningrad school was kicked down a flight of stone stairs by a PE teacher who had told him that he did not like Jews; a Jewish woman interviewed explained how her flat was broken into by Pamyat racists who killed her husband in the course of the vicious attack. Dmitri Vasiliev, a personification of poisonous ignorance who leads Pamyat, blamed the Jews for the Bolshevik revolution; "They may denounce Communism today, but they gave it to us as a present. Because Marx is a Jew and, I might add, they crucified Christ". So, after over seventy years of state-capitalist rule in the name of socialism the state has not even succeeded in wiping out the cancer of racism inside Russia. On the contrary, the utter failure of the Bolshevik experiment has led workers to seek scapegoats in order to take out their anger at the wretchedness of their impoverished lives.

But why make Jews the scapegoat? Shadow On The Cross (C4. 6 June, 9pm) was a very informative documentary about the historical role of Christianity as a machine for propagating anti-semitic racism. The programme quoted from the bigoted writings of the Christian saints (St Gregory: "The Jews are murderers of the Lord, rebels and detesters of God companions of the devil, darkeners of the mind . . . enemies of all that is beautiful" ) and showed how most of the anti-Jewish actions of the Nazis had been predated by papal edicts. For example, in medieval Europe, Jews were forced to live in ghettoes and wear yellow circles as marks of inferior identification. Luther, the father of protestantism. was quoted as asking: "What shall we do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? First, to set fire to their synagogues and bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man need ever again see a stone or a cinder of them. This is to be done in honour of our Lord and of Christendom. so that God might see that we are Christians".

Is it any wonder, the programme asked, that when the leading Nazi anti-semite, Streicher, was on trial at Nuremburg he pleaded that he was only obeying the teachings of Luther? It is a decadent and outmoded social system which concocts such poisons for workers to swallow.

Steve Coleman

Stalinism, Russia and the Jews (1957)

From the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

In August 1939 the Soviet-Nazi pact of non-aggression and co-operation between Russia and Germany was signed. From this date the position of the Jews in the Soviet Union became most difficult. The Soviet government did not allow the Russian Yiddish Press to mention Nazi atrocities against Jews in Europe; and, more important, when the Germans did make their attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, millions of Jews had not been warned or evacuated from the areas of Western Russia and Eastern Poland, annexed by Russia. Of the situation at the beginning of the war between Germany and Russia, David J. Dallin, the well-known Menshevik writer and commentator, wrote in his book, The New Soviet Empire:—

“The fury of the German occupation was directed primarily against the Jews and against members of the Communist Party. But the Soviet radio and press chose to say nothing of this. They sought to create the impression that die Germans were out to exterminate everyone alike. And so, while Berlin was maintaining a strict silence about its gas ovens, its concentration camps, and S.S. atrocities against Jewish women and children, the Moscow government also kept quiet. The motives may have differed, but the result was the same. Neither the Russian nor the Jewish population of Russia knew what the German war held in store for them" (p. 115).

At the beginning of the war 60,000 Jews were massacred in Riga; 12,000 in Minsk; 10,000 in Pinsk; 7,000 in Kerch; 6,000 in Vitebsk, and so on. But by 1942 the Soviet government began to show a great deal of interest in the Jews. It encouraged their nationalistic and religious feelings. It formed the “Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee." But in areas overrun by the German armies anti-Jewish feeling, encouraged to a large extent by the Germans, began to show itself. Dallin, in his book, The Real Soviet Russia, says that under the German occupation, especially in the beginning, dozens of Russian pro-Nazi newspapers were started, in which they welcomed,"on behalf of the intelligentsia"and “ on behalf of the Russian people," the liberation from Bolshevism and “Jewish rule." (p. 209). And directly after the war Mr. M. Philips Price, M.P., who visited the Soviet Union, kept on hearing in Kiev, in the Ukraine, that “these Jews are here again." (Russia, Red or White, p. 68). The Jewish population was—and still is—large in Kiev. Before the 1917 Revolution the Jews in Kiev, as elsewhere in the Ukraine and Western Russia, were mainly engaged in small trades, general dealing and petty business. Today most of their businesses and shops are nationalised and the Jews are found in large numbers as civil servants, clerks in state enterprises, etc. They were to a large extent the backbone of the Stalinist bureaucracy before the last war.

After the War

Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda had had a profound effect on sections of the Soviet people, and this strengthened Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and the desire for a national homeland. Later Jewish feeling in Russia was further stirred by the actual creation of the State of Israel. And the Soviet government feared that the establishment of the State of Israel would encourage Zionism or "Jewish bourgeois nationalism," as they called it, even more in the Soviet Union itself.

From the end of 1947 the fight against "bourgeois nationalism" was on. It was conducted by the Stalinists with much violence, particularly in the Ukraine. "The first admission about the emergence  of Zionist tendencies in the post-war period," writes Walter Kolarz," was made in September 1947, during the plenary session the Union of Soviet Writers of the Ukraine, where 'the existence of nationalist Zionist views in the work number of Jewish writers’ was unmasked." (Russia and Her Colonies, p. 168). Later on, in 1949, the Yiddish almanac, Der Shtern, was banned for “ideological mistakes." The Jewish publishing house, Der Emes, the Jewish newspaper, Aynikeit, and the Jewish theatre were all closed down in 1949; and the Jewish anti-Fascist committee was disbanded.

Stalinist persecution of the Jews continued for some time. In 1953 many Soviet Jews were disturbed by the so-called “Jewish doctors plot." Communists in Russia, Britain and elsewhere denied that there was an anti-Semitic campaign in Russia. But since Stalin's death they have changed their minds. They are now admitting much of the truth.

Communist Party Report

In October 1956 a delegation from the British Communist Party visited the Soviet Union. They have summarised their findings in the official Communist journal, World News (12/1/57).

The report states that prior to Stalin's death rumours began to spread that all was not well, and that well-known Jewish writers and “intellectuals" in the Soviet Union had disappeared. After the Khrushchev revelations at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union specific charges were made in Folkszjtyme, a Polish Jewish workers' paper, “that could not be ignored, for these charges were consistent with the kind of accusations which Khrushchev had levelled against Stalin, Beria and the security police.” The report continues:—

“The charges specifically named a number of Jewish writers, artists and intellectuals as having been tortured and physically destroyed, particularly during the period 1948-52, and this included the whole Jewish anti-Fascist Committee which had done yeoman service in helping to mobilise Jewish support of the Soviet Union during the darkest days of the war."

The delegation found many difficulties in their search for information, but they found a certain amount of negative information at the Lenin State Library, where there was a Yiddish and a Hebrew section containing 15,000 and 70,000 items respectively. But: “It turned out that there is nothing in Yiddish later than 1948, when publication of Yiddish papers and journals must therefore have ceased."

The Soviet Encyclopedia, which in its 1932 edition devoted 160 columns to the Jews, had in its 1952 edition only four columns.

“The biographies of many eminent Jews had been removed. Marx was no longer referred to as a Jew  . . .  For example, Heimland, a Yiddish journal, was in the library up to the volumes of 1948 and no later. The collected works of Halkin and Vergelis, Yiddish poets still alive, were there up to 1948."

But, as the delegation reports, that year seemed to be marked out as a significant date.

The Black Years

It was through personal conversations by one of the delegation, H. Levy, that the delegation found out that the years 1948-52 were known by Soviet Jews as “The Black Years"—a period during which many Jews disappeared; when many more were dismissed from their jobs; when Jewish writers and poets and artists were arrested and charged with treason; when Jews were executed and murdered, and Yiddish disappeared from the street and the market place.

   “Conversations with the relatives of cultural workers who had been liquidated seemed to suggest that the procedure was invariable. Those arrested and charged in secret were prominent political or cultural workers. Shortly after his arrest the immediate relatives of the arrested man would be deported to some distant place and there set to work often at low wages. Finally, the husband would be shot, perhaps after torture, to try to force him to confess or incriminate others . . .  and this procedure was carried out by the security police under the direct authority of Beria, with the agreement of Stalin himself, who had apparently become convinced of Beria's genuineness in seeking out the class enemy . . .
   It is unnecessary to give chapter and verse as proof of these crimes. They are known, admitted and accepted as fact in the Soviet Union today, and no attempt is made to deny them. Since the Twentieth Congress many facts stand out as evidence of a changed attitude and therefore as indirect evidence of the terror that proceeded it." 

Life for the majority of people in the world today is not a particularly happy one—it is a life of general insecurity, of wars and of want. But, because of historical and social circumstances, life for many of the world’s Jews has possibly been more insecure, more unhappy. They have been the victims of periods of persecution and unspeakable atrocities; of mass murder in concentration camps and gas chambers, and of periodic pogroms. For the Jews of Russia, before and after the 1917 Revolution, the picture has been much the same: periods of relative tranquillity followed by pogroms, persecution and the like. For our part we would point out, however, that the solution of the “Jewish question” does not lie in a “Jewish Home”; a State of Israel or a Soviet Birobidzhan; or even mere assimilation into the non-Jewish working-class.

The problems that confront the Jews of Russia— and elsewhere—and other religious and social minorities, can only disappear when the vast mass of people have become socialist in outlook—in a truly Socialist world: not the sham Socialism, or Communism of Russia, and elsewhere we see today. 

Peter E. Newell