Sting in the Tail: Superstition in India (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Superstition in India

Superstition still flourishes in India as elsewhere. Guru Busters (BBC2, 10 September) showed how hordes of self-styled “Gods”, Fakirs, fortune tellers, quacks, etc., hoodwink millions by using simple conjuring tricks, elementary chemistry and seemingly impossible physical feats.

It was amazing to hear wealthy, educated men justifying their allegiance to one God-man, Sai Baba, on the ground that he had given them gold trinkets which he had created “out of nothing”. Strangely, this God’s poorer followers received no gold, only “holy ash”.

Opposing these frauds are the Rationalists who tour the countryside showing audiences how anyone can perform the various “miracles. What they do is worthwhile, but it will be the continuing development of capitalism in India which will most effectively attack the ignorance and backwardness on which superstition feeds.

Meanwhile, our comrades in India get on with the really worthwhile work of spreading the ideas of scientific socialism there.

Must do better, Desmond

So disappointed is Archbishop Desmond Tutu with South Africa’s ANC-led government that he can only award it an alpha minus for its performance so far. (The Herald, 4 September).

The well-publicised scramble by some ANC leaders to climb aboard “the gravy train” was bad enough, but now the government has been caught selling arms to Rwanda through Armcorp, the state arms corporation.

The Archbishop notes that: "Almost everywhere, and certainly in Africa, armies are not for the defence of the citizenry, they are instruments of repression. ”

For this he deserves an alpha plus, but he continues:

“What we want ultimately is to see Africa demilitarised. If you have countries that claim to he democratic, and are friendly with one another, what do you need huge armies for? We should start by dismantling Armcorp. ”

Archbishop Tutu is a humane and well-meaning man, but for being so naive as to imagine that demilitarisation can occur within the conflict-ridden, money-grubbing capitalist system, well, we can only award him a beta minus for that.

Greens in dreamland

Many “Greens” pin their hopes for a greener world on persuading governments to become eco-friendly within the profit- motive economy.

An article in the Observer (17 September) shows what forlorn hopes they are. The British government’s pollution watchdog. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP), reports that a severe shortage of inspectors meant that it carried out only 60 percent of scheduled checks on factories during 1994-5, and as a result pollution spills into the air and rivers doubled.

And the government’s response to this? It is to merge HMIP with the National Rivers Authority next year, a cost-cutting measure which is expected to reduce the number of inspectors still further.

The outlook of these Greens surely amounts to the triumph of hope over experience.

Who are they kidding?

Some Labour MPs have been complaining about Tony Blair’s undemocratic style of leadership, but when was the Labour Party ever democratic?

At the top, Labour’s leaders have a long history’ of simply ignoring conference decisions they didn't like, while trade union bosses cynically cast millions of votes at Labour conferences on behalf of their members, many if not most of whom didn't even support Labour.

At local level there are claims that an influx of new Asian members into Govan Labour Party is connected with the ambition of an Asian councillor to replace the present MP as candidate at the next election. A party official explained on TV that nothing unusual was happening as vote-rigging is the norm prior to candidates being selected.

And West Renfrew MP Tommy Graham has been trying to secure his re-selection by

“recruiting pensioners in pubs and at Linwood DayCare Centre. Many did not even know they were joining the Labour Party" (Observer, 3 September).

Those dissident Labour MPs will be well aware that their party is undemocratic from top to bottom.

Tunnel vision

As commuters and lorry drivers race through the tunnels under the Tyne and the Clyde few of them will think about the crippling condition of osteonecrosis. The victims of this condition, who constructed these tunnels in the sixties, can think of little else.

Osteonecrosis is the direct result of working in compressed air pumped into the tunnels when they were built to stop the walls collapsing. The workers were not warned of the dangers and they were not properly decompressed before returning to the open air.

"Hugh Davey, A Tyne tunneler said: There's about 50 of us from the Tyne. We look like a bunch of old men. I'm 56: I look like a man of 70. I've already had one hip done and I’m on constant pain killers. I had to stop work in 1981. We didn't know what would happen. We thought, we can't come to no harm—they must know what they were doing. We thought they’d look after us. It's destroyed my life ’ ” (Observer, 17 September).

The firms did know “what they were doing”. They were producing a commodity as cheaply as possible. Cutting corners on the health and safety of the working class is just “good business practice”. It is not the function of capitalism to “look after” the welfare of the workers—it’s the profits and the shareholders that have to be looked after.

Sting in the Tail: An ill wind (1990)

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

An ill wind

As thousands of workers await in fear the outcome of events in the Gulf and the prospect of war appears more and more likely, it is worth noting that these development are not being greeted with universal horror.

Some people are delighted with the war preparations. For instance, according to The Times (13 October) It would seem that it is shudders of delight, not fear, that are being experienced in the City.

Enterprise has become the first oil company to give an Indication of the impact the Middle Eastern troubles and the consequent surge in the price of oil are having. The group told a packed meeting of City fund managers at James Capel, the broker, that the oil price rise had added £1 million a day to its profits.

The winds of war may seem harsh to the Kuwait hostages but in the City it is a delightful zephyr.

Marxism "Fails" Again

The Guardian's much-hyped interview with Russian spy, George Blake, appeared on 19 September along with the headline "Blake says Marxism failed. 

Nowhere in the interview did Blake say any such thing. What he did say was that the "communist" party had failed but someone at the Guardian saw fit to twist this.

In any case Blake is hardly an authority on Marxism: according to the interview he believes in "predestination", meaning that people have no choice of action, and he claims that his belief was "strengthened by Marxism"

Compare this with Marx's own view:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make It under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.

Where is the "predestination" there?

George Blake certainly had a talent for disclosing state secrets but Marxism obviously remains a secret for him.

No More Workers?

The Times (8 October) reports an amazing court case that is to be heard this month in the High Court.

The subject is to be — is there such a social group as the working class! This astonishing question has arisen over Lady Porter, leader of Westminster Council, trying to pull down a block of flats owned by the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate.

The flats were granted to the Westminster Council on a 999 year lease in 1937. The lease specified that they be "dwellings for the working class".

Now Lady Porter, heiress to the Tesco millions, wants to pull them down for redevelopment and her claim is "working class no longer has a clear meaning in Thatcher's Britain."

The arrogance of the capitalist class knows no bounds. Here is a rich woman who lives off the surplus value created by the working class and, in an attempt at a shady redevelopment deal, claims there is no such class as the working class!

Hearing Voices

Peter Morgan must be a very clever man. He told a meeting in Birmingham that if the "Jeremiah voices" were heeded then Britain would be talked into recession. (Oracle: 4 October).

If Mr. Morgan is right then he is half-way to discovering the cure for capitalism's boom-slump cycle: after all, if Britain can be talked into recession then it can just as easily be talked back out again!

No wonder Peter Morgan is the highly-paid Director General of the Institute of Directors.

Expert Witness

Mrs. Thatcher's pet economist, Professor Alan Walters, once warned her to "remember how little we understand about the economy".

Can this be true? Look at what happens whenever figures on inflation, High Street spending, balance of trade, etc., are published: they are nearly always very different from what the "experts" predicted.

And although every bank and stockbroker employs well-paid analysts to assess the prospects of industries and companies, they very often get it completely wrong — the City encouraged investors to buy shares in Coloroll and British and Commonwealth just before they both crashed.

Various excuses are given for all this: that companies withhold vital information which makes them look better than they are or that the quality of the analysts is poor.

The truth is that even the best analysts armed with the best available information cannot tell how capitalism's economy will behave. How can they, when producers and consumers all over the world are making decisions about spending, investment, production, etc., which no one knows about, and all doing this within market and political conditions which constantly change.

It would seem for once the Prof, was only telling it like it is.

Follow My Leader

It is a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the movement for world socialism has got to be democratic: that a majority of the working class must understand and desire socialism before it can come about. This principled position has received nothing but cynicism and abuse from reformist parties such as the Labour Party. That the Labour Party’s aim is nothing other than the continuation of capitalism should be obvious but perhaps there are still some misguided workers who imagine that the Labour Party is at least democratic.

If there are any such dupes around surely this report in The Economist (6 October) must make even them think again:

This year, If he had been able to get away with it, Mr. Kinnock would probably have preferred to have no conference at all. As It was, things were tightly controlled. On a few issues, such as defence cuts and inner-party democracy, the conference did rise in rebellion. But that did not signify much: these days, the leadership simply ignores inconvenient votes.

Thus, after the defence vote that appeared to commit him to a £7 billion cut in Britain's military budget, Mr. Kinnock calmly announced: "We live in the world of realities, not resolutions." And then he walked cheerily away.

Freedom of the Press

The freedom of the Press is one of those capitalist freedoms that appears to be so desirable and worthwhile on paper but when the facts are examined it turns out to be just another capitalist sham.

The Independent on Sunday was launched at the beginning of the year with a fanfare of independent noises. Indeed its statutes forbid any investor from holding more than 15% of its shares. It is in direct competition with the Sunday Correspondent, an ailing rival that Is losing around £250,000 a week and which recently changed to a tabloid format in a desperate attempt to survive.

Strangely enough this change was financed by Mr. Robert Maxwell who owns 8% of the Independent on Sunday. This apparently benign gesture is probably best explained by The Economist (6 October):

Mr. Maxwell hopes that the survival of the Correspondent for just a little longer will increase the pressure on the Independent's shareholders to change the rules and sell more shares to him. Fanciful speculation? Not at all. When we put the theory to Mr. Maxwell, he described It as "a very shrewd and cunning observation".

Sting in the Tail: Behind the fine words (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind the fine words

Environmentalists were delighted by the news that “The United States and the European Union forced through a ministerial statement which bound the OECD group of industrialised countries to adopt legally binding limits, targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emission from 2000" (Guardian, 19 July).

But the deal drew “fierce objections” from Russia, Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries because it threatens their income from fossil-fuel sales, and without their acceptance all the fine words are meaningless.

And Charles Linderman, speaking for 600 US electricity producers, claimed the deal “would eliminate millions of American jobs, reduce America’s ability to compete and force Americans into second-rate lifestyles.”

How will American voters react to this? We have seen how quickly governments can change their policies when votes are at stake, so before environmentalists start celebrating they should remember capitalism’s host of conflicting economic and political interests.

Land of the Free

After the press revelations about President Clinton’s murky doings as Governor of Arkansas, we now learn his Republican opponent, Robert Dole, also has a doubtful financial past.

The vice-chairman of Dole’s national finance committee has been fined $1 million, his company has agreed to pay a further $5 million, and the US Attorney is still demanding that he should go to jail. All of this in connection with a giant fraud to fund Dole’s campaign.

Stanley Hilton, who was the counsel on Dole’s Senate Staff in 1979-80, has explained Dole’s relationship to donors in “Senators for Sale”:

“He is largely a special-interest slot machine, a human pendulum dancing to the tune of the highest contributors. . . Dole’s career symbolises much of what is wrong with American politics: the shameless selling of office and legislation to the highest bidder."

This is the reality behind all those find words—’’democracy”, “law and order” and the “American way of life”.

Leave those kids alone

Capitalism perverts everything it touches. It sees childhood as a “selling opportunity”.

One company, Imagination for School Media Marketing, has secured clearance from the government to sell advertising hoardings in school corridors. Another is producing a bulletin of groovy words used by kids in the playground so that advertisers can cash in on a market worth £1.6 billion a year of children’s direct purchases and £8.4 billion the kids have in “pester power”.

Jane Mathews, a board director of ad agency J. Walker Thomson, says in the Observer (14 July):

“Advertising is a very soft target. It is easy for the Press to lay the blame at the nasty ad agencies’ door, but more should be said about parents, who in the end have the ultimate responsibility—they can always say no.”

Mathews knows only too well, with a potential £10 billion market the advertisers rely heavily on kids’ “pester power”.

She is right in one respect though. We all have the power to stop this perversion of childhood—we can just say No to capitalism.

Cops and capitalism

Socialists are precise about the term “working class”. We mean all those who must sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary'. The “left” are vague on this. They classify such workers as doctors, university lecturers or the police as “middle class”.

A reading of The Job, staff magazine of London police officers, should dispel any doubts about the class position of the police. The majority of ads are for loans or debt counselling.

An ex-policeman Mike Thomas of insolvency firm C. Jacob and Co., which advertises in The Job, is quoted in Time Out (17 July) on some policemen’s plight:

“I know of police officers w ho take home £720 per month for a full week including weekends and night shifts.”

The Police Federation has expressed concern about the plight of new recruits since the scrapping of housing allowances, reduction in overtime and mileage allowance. According to them some recruits are having to claim Family-Credit or take out bank loans in order to survive.

Despite the illusions of the left—or the police themselves—cops are workers.

New Labour, new cuisine

It was Thursday, 11 July, and the Savoy chef had excelled himself in producing salad with asparagus and chicken, salmon watercress sauce and lemon brûlée on a raspberry coulis.

It was a very' important dinner date. It was New Labour’s £500 a head fund raiser.

As the diners left the millionaires’ hotel, fortified by “after dinner port and cognac offered courtesy of Philip Morris Limited”, was the sound emanating from doorway dossers in the Strand that of hollow laughter?

Socialists? Do me a favour, guv.

Sting in the Tail: Discontented Capitalists (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discontented Capitalists

At present Lord Palumbo is facing a fierce legal battle with his son and daughter over his management of a £70 million trust fund. They reckon he should be replaced as trustee as they don't like some of the things he is doing with the money.

This wrangling over the loot produced by the working class amongst the families of the capitalists is no new thing, but what makes it interesting is some of the expenditure by Lord Palumbo that is revealed by the dispute.

"Among the transactions being questioned by the children are the purchase of a Scottish island and two houses in France worth £4.5 million; £9.5 m in directors' payments; charitable donations of £4.9m; and donations to Tory party funds of £263,000.

They also allege that £13m has been spent on works of art, £2.5m on wine and about £2m on assorted properties and vintage cars. Lord and Lady Palumbo deny any misuse of the trust fund."

(The Independent 6th August).

Managing a £70 million trust fund must be quite demanding, doing so while allegedly consuming about £7,000 a week, since 1987, on booze is mind blowing!

Would-be capitalists

Workers are forever dreaming of winning the football pools. Living, as they do, in poor housing and fearing the prospect of unemployment it is not difficult to see why.

If you live in a large city like Manchester or Glasgow, statistically you have a better chance of being murdered than winning a large prize on the pools.

Even if you should be one of the very lucky few it does not mean security for life as shown by a report in the Sunday Times (31 July)

"Stockbroker Peter Creegan, who advises Littlewoods winners, advises: no pools winner should give up work unless he is at least 40."

Certainly, if like Lord Palumbo, your wine bill is £7,000 a week, you should consider keeping on your day job.

Contented capitalists

Under the heading "City Warms to Tony Blair’s Labour", The Independent (6 August) in their View from City Road column recalled how pleasing past Labour governments have been to all those drones, hangers-on and speculators collectively known as "the City."

"During the first Wilson government of 1963 to 1970, shareholders saw a 100 percent return on shares, or 13 percent a year, and in the second period of Labour rule returns were nearly 200 per cent, or 40 per cent a year, according to figures prepared by BZW.

Gilt markets did not do so well in the first phase, returning only 5 per cent over the seven year period, but returns were over 100 per cent, or 20 per cent a year, under Labour in the seventies."

Remembering that the source of all rent, interest and profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, you can see that while some sections of the British capitalist class may rejoice at the return of a Labour government no member of the working class should.

Odious comparison

Some other shareholders are also upset. These are managers in British Telecom who are faced with redundancy. BT wants to get rid of 6,500 of them this year even if this means by compulsion.

As is usual in such cases, those faced with the sack argued that savings could be made elsewhere and pointed to the huge sums paid to BTs Board of Directors.

BTs Chairman, Sir Iain Vallance, had a predictable answer to that one:

". . . board decisions were more far-reaching in their impact and deserved a higher bonus level, while board salaries also had to reflect the level of pay at other top companies."

(Guardian 29 July)

That last bit is sheer humbug. What if BTs unions demanded a pay rise because "other top companies" were paying more than BT workers were getting? Vallance's answer to that would be equally predictable — that what other companies pay their employees in no business of BT.

Wrong union

In July we drew attention to some Buddhist monks in Japan who formed a trade union. Now we learn that the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) has recruited a dozen Anglican clergy and hopes to enrol thousands more in a special clergy section.

Falling congregations and the loss of millions of pounds on the property market have forced the church into a major economy drive. "Livings" have been lost as parishes amalgamated and there is a proposal to abolish "the parson’s freehold" which has guaranteed free housing and job security until 70.

Faced with this twin threat, one union recruit said:

"On the whole, my background would not be particularly pro-union, but I'm in the process of being re-educated. We are being told bishops are man-managers, that they are adopting management structures. The logic is, if they want to adopt a more managerial stance, those at the coalface must adopt a more ’worker' stance."

(Guardian 3 August)

That clergymen should join a trade union is appropriate enough. What is not is joining one which has some connection with science.

God in retreat

Thirty-one years ago the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God, put the cat among the theological pigeons. In it he denied the existence of a supernatural God. Instead, God was love, tolerance and all that was best in mankind.

Now comes Anthony Freeman, the Sussex Gear, who has been sacked by the C of E for saying much the same. And he is not alone. He has the support of 22 vicars, non-conformist ministers and a Roman Catholic priest.

One of his supporters said: " . . . to hold to a traditional view of an external deity does not make sense" (Guardian 4 August), while Freeman claimed on TV that "a substantial number" of priests shared his views but are afraid to speak out in case they share his fate.

Islamic fundamentalism and crackpot evangelism may be temporarily on the rise elsewhere, but in this part of the world religious superstition is undeniably in headlong retreat.

Blogger's Note:

The August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article - written by Pieter Lawrence - which discussed the controversy surrounding the Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God.

Sting in the Tail: The common factor (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The common factor

Following the Estonia tragedy:

"Swedish and Finnish ferry lines admitted hushing-up six serious incidents which preceded the Estonia’s sinking ” (Teletext 30 September).

These roll-on roll-off ferries are liable to capsize when even a relatively small amount of water enters the vehicle decks, yet Alan Clark, ex-Tory MP, said on Question Time (29 September) that marine architects can quite easily design ships which prevent this, but, with touching concern for human life asked “would this really be worth all the expense and inconvenience?”

And this is what it is all about:

“The economic reason why vehicle decks are not subdivided to prevent rapid capsize is that this would obstruct bailing, increase turnaround times and reduce the number of cars or lorries a ship should carry. That would mean higher fares, lower profits, or both — and at a time, so far as British operators are concerned, when ferries are facing fresh competition from the Channel tunnel” (Guardian 24 September).

Every disaster which comes along, be it Piper Alpha, the King's Cross Underground fire, the train crash at Clapham Junction or the Herald of Free Enterprise, provides evidence aplenty that capitalism’s remorseless drive to cut costs at the expense of safety is the prime cause of them all.

Healthy profits

Today’s economic climate has seen many employers cut the wages and conditions and increase the workload of their employees.

This often leads to the deterioration of the physical and mental health of the workers involved, but some other employers recognise that this approach is counter-productive and are concerned to protect and even improve the health and well-being of their employees.

Companies such as Grand Met, Glaxo. Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, IBM and Nestle are participating in the Wellness Forum which promotes preventative health care by health screening along with weight control, anti-smoking and anti-alcohol abuse programmes.

There are sound commercial reasons behind this. A spokesman for the Institute of Personnel and Development told the Independent:

“Employers in their own interests have got to maximise the use of people at work as far as they can. Absenteeism is very expensive ” (9 September).

This absenteeism is estimated by the CBI to cost £13 billion a year, and the Independent adds that the Forum has “a belief in the correlation between a healthy workforce and healthy profits”.

Looking after the goose that lays the golden eggs always made more sense than killing it.

YC’s get KO’d

A new book True Blues, claims that Tory Party membership has slumped from 2.8 million in 1952 to below 500,000 now and is still falling.

Feeling better? Well, there’s more good news, because the Young Conservatives are set for the chop. And no wonder. Having been taken over by the “radical right” in much the same way as Labour's youth wing was by Trotskyists, the YC’s have long been a thorn in the side of the parent party.

There were well-publicised links with the BNP and other racists groups, support for apartheid, jokes about the Holocaust, vicious faction fighting and lots of hooliganism From a peak of 100,000 membership has plunged to around 5,000, so Tory Central Office probably reckons that what’s left isn’t worth the hassle.

A Tory' youth organisation may well continue to exist in one form or another, but the heady days when the YC’s seemed to consist of youngsters all desperately trying to outdo one another in sounding more reactionary and bloodthirsty, are probably over for good.

Heller’s history

Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, published in 1962, was a brilliant and hilarious account of the corruption and insanity of capitalism set against the background of World War Two.

The long-awaited sequel is now ready, so Sally Vincent travelled to interview Heller, and her account of their meeting appeared in Weekend Guardian (24 September).

Heller’s perception of capitalism has not dimmed. According to Sally Vincent he thinks:

“We can produce enough food to feed the world, hut simultaneously can V because there's no profit producing enough food. ”

And he apparently thinks that “Marx was right”, although about what he didn't say, but his perception leaves him when it comes to interpreting history which he thinks is “autonomous and proceeds independently of the people who make it.”

Marx took a very different view: 

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. ” 

As a novelist, Heller takes some beating, but when it comes to explaining history then it has to be Marx.

Doubting Thomas

The sacking of the Sussex vicar Anthony Freeman for revealing that he doesn’t believe in God highlights the problem facing many of these sky pilots.

Take the example of an anonymous Church of Scotland minister, whose dilemma was reported in Scotland on Sunday (14 August):

“Thomas does not believe in God. There was no virgin birth, no resurrection, Jesus was a mere inspirational mortal like Ghandi and there is, most sadly, no life after death. The last bit gets tricky, for he must pretend to believe in some kind of afterlife to soothe many of the pensioners he talks to each Sunday from the pulpit. "

All workers must sell their ability to work for a wage or salary, and these professional holy men are no different. Here is what our reverend gentleman has to say about it:

“To be honest, I've got a family to feed and a career and a pension to think about. I don't think I should put my job on the line just for the sake of discussion of some arcane beliefs and ideas that probably don't really matter anyway. ”

Blogger's Notes: 

• Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The King's Cross Underground fire was covered in the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The Piper Alpha disaster was covered in the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Sting in the Tail: The Numbers Game (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Numbers Game

Listen, John, I've just been reading the November / December issue of Labour Party News. It's full of Neil Kinnock and his pals on about the wonderful future they offer "our country" if they get in.

And they've got their own Premier Savings Account at "competitive rates of interest", a competition with a £10,000 tax-free prize, a Visa card, a lottery, and organic wines! Couldn't find a mention of socialism, but you can't have everything, can you?

They’ve got a lot of new members too; 140 here, 35 there, but the official "Recruiter of the Year" is a Nottingham youngster who roped in 200! It's easy, John, there's a membership form inside if you want to join: no conditions, no questions asked.

All this recruitment looks good — what's that you say? Labour's membership has dropped from 350,000 in 1980 to 288,000 now! Christ, that Nottingham youngster had better get his finger out, hadn't he?

Open Secrets

For fifty years groups of Leninists have been boring-from-within the Labour Party.

Because their own ideas have very little electoral support, they hope to gain influence in the Labour Party which they see as "the mass organisation of the working class".

There have been many such hopefuls down through the years of which "Militant" is only the best known. As would-be Bolsheviks they exist as "secret" groups but always there are the inevitable defectors to reveal all.

The latest group to be shopped is "Socialist Organiser" which, according to an ex-member, is:

. . . completely committed to remaining within the Labour Party, and will jump through each and every hoop the (Labour) NEC places before them to save themselves.

The Guardian (24 December)

These groups are an obstacle to Labour's chances of running British capitalism and are being rooted-out, but doubtless there will in the future be others willing to jump through endless hoops in pursuit of Lenin's useless and discredited ideas.

Princely Piffle

Prince Charles, authority on ecology and architecture, has been airing his views on

politics and economics.

Speaking on French TV he

. . . called for a balance between the ideals of capitalism and communism.

The Guardian (24 December)

What he meant by "communism" is, of course, what existed in Eastern Europe and which he described only last year as "one vast prison". What "ideals"of this system does he admire?

The Prince continued:

We need capitalism, but perhaps with a more human face. We need a system in which big capital becomes more and more Interested in local communities. . . and the developing countries.

As if capitalism will do this as an act of altruism and without taking profits into account!

This ignorance of capitalism's priorities is further revealed by his call for banks to lend to "gifted" young people to start their own businesses. Alas, the banks

. . . weren't in the slightest bit interested because young people had nothing to offer as guarantees.

We doubt if bank depositors would share the Prince's desire to see their savings lent without collateral.

Let's hope that HRH knows more about ecology and architecture than he does about politics and economics.

Keen as Mustard

During World War II over one thousand Australian servicemen were used as human guinea-pigs in experiments with mustard gas. Many of them had up to 95% of their skins burned and a top-secret film recorded the horrific details in glorious technicolor.

Were these men prisoners of the Japanese and the victims of a bestial atrocity? No, it was the Australian and British governments who conducted the experiments on them.

All this emerged in a BBC2 Horizon programme on January 14. The experiments were supposed to provide information for "defensive" purposes should Japan use mustard gas, but Horizon revealed that the Allies intended to use the gas on the Japanese: they decided on the atom bomb instead.

Probably the most shocking revelation for many who saw the programme was that the human guinea-pigs were all volunteers. One of the scientists involved in the experiments said that the men "knew what they were in for". This was only partly true because the call for volunteers made no mention of mustard gas, and the men certainly didn’t know there would be such long-term after-effects as leukemia and damage to internal organs.

There is nothing new in workers volunteering to perform capitalism's dangerous tasks. They are forever risking their health and lives in the service of their masters, and it is nothing new for them to be rewarded in cruel and inhuman fashion.

Gulf Reality

While TV commentators move toy tanks over sandy table tops and gush on about "pincer movements" like demented schoolboys: the realities of war are much more soberly summed up by one of the participants of the real war.

Here, for example, are the unexpurgated thoughts of Captain Ronald Thomas, from Stoke-on-Trent and A Squadron of the 16th /5th, as he watched his soldiers load their missiles for what might be the last hours of peace. "Yes, I'm frightened of dying. Everyone's thinking about it now." (A pause here.) "But you know, I'll be really pissed off if I didn't see my family again. I've got four kids. I’d be fucking angry if I was killed."

The Independent (15 January)

Anger is, of course, understandable but it is only anger based on knowledge of how capitalism leads to armed hostility that is of any use in combating the threat of war.

Reality Gulf

Now that hostilities have broken out in the Gulf, it is reassuring to learn that those with a hot line to the deity are showing a touching compassion.

Although Dr Robert Runcie and Cardinal Basil Hume acknowledge that It was sometimes necessary to resort to war, they said in a joint statement that they had emphasised to John Major "our concern that only the minimum force necessary to secure the UN objectives should be used, without inflicting indiscriminate damage on Iraq and its citizens."

They also urged the Prime Minister to safeguard sacred Muslim sites from attack in Iraq.

The Independent 15 January

When the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic Cardinal unite on joint statements, you can be sure you will get a dose of arrant nonsense. "Indiscriminate damage" is the nature of war. There are no rockets or bombs that select the guilty and spare the innocent.

However it is touching to that they are concerned about fellow divines in Iraq — no hiding out in the sacred sites!

Sting in the Tail: Plain speaking (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plain speaking

There has been an outbreak of plain speaking from politicians recently. That nice Mr Major has been calling some of his Cabinet colleagues "bastards". Now Mr Thorbjoern Bernsten has called Britain’s Environment Minister Mr John Gummer "a shitbag".

All this foul language is nothing however compared to Mr Gummer’s plain speaking in reply to Mr Bernsten:

"I don't think the comments of people in an election campaign . . . are worth making much about" The Herald (18 August).

Now that is plain speaking. Mr Gummer reckons you shouldn’t pay much attention to what politicians say at election campaigns. Well done, Honest John!

We certainly don’t put much store by what the professional liars say at election times; either in Norway, Britain or anywhere else for that matter.

Ghost riders

A plague of ’ghost riders’ has been fleecing public transport companies in America. There are people who climb onto buses which have been involved in accidents in order to claim compensation for non-existent injuries.

To counter this, some bus companies have staged fake accidents which they filmed. In one case:

"Video cameras inside the bus and outside filmed 17 people scrambling on to the bus before the police arrived. All later claimed to be injured in the accident". (Guardian, 19 August).

Doctors and lawyers also get in on the act by having "runners" who arrive quickly on the scene to hand out leaflets with phone numbers and and advice to passengers to claim for neck and back injuries which are hard to disprove.

All of this "enterprise" doesn’t meet with the approval of the bus companies and their insurers, but it shows that America is still "the land of opportunity"!

UN corruption

Allegations that United Nations soldiers in Sarajevo are involved in widespread corruption have provided the press with plenty of "shock-horror" headlines.

The idea that anyone connected with the UN should be above such things is ludicrous when it is seen to be comprised of nations all of which are part of the world-system called capitalism. For all of these soldiers to be unaffected by the corruption which is part of capitalism’s culture is impossible.

This episode also produced an illuminating example of the morality of capitalism. Sylvana Foa, the UN spokeswoman, commented:

"I don t think anybody should be too surprised that out of 14,000 pimply 18-year olds a bunch of them should get up to naughty tricks. It happens in every war — it's just sad they were wearing blue berets" (Guardian, 27 August).

Apparently it didn’t strike her as sad that "pimply 18-year olds" should be part of killing-machines called armies.

Sink or swim

The battle to dominate the package-holiday market is hotting up once more. The cutthroat pricing of recent years caused by falling bookings was replaced last year by a truce during which operators rebuilt profit margins by increasing prices.

At last the market is growing again: Thomson, Britain’s biggest operator, estimates that bookings are up 14 percent on last year and the industry expects 1994 to be even better.

Now the industry’s heavyweights have announced price-cuts for 1994 and Patricia Yates, editor of Holiday Which explains why. They are:

"clearly looking for a killer blow which will knock out some of their smaller competitors, at the same time carving out a bigger market share among major competitors" (Guardian, 17 August).

Is this sort of predatory behaviour simply down to greed? It is what every company in capitalism must do, if it is able, to ensure that the day doesn’t come when it will be swallowed up or forced out of business.

Satisfaction

What gives people most satisfaction in life? Supporters of the market economy say it is more and more money because it buys the goodies and the leisure which compensate for the pain of having to work.

Along comes Professor Lane of Yale University to challenge this view. He cites recent studies in America which show that what gives people most satisfaction are good human relationships, job satisfaction, and (something despised by marketeers) security.

This is what socialists have been saying all along, but we don't think these things can be universally available within the market economy. Prof Lane does and argues that "governments must intervene’ with policies that will ’convert markets to that purpose’.

The Prof is yet another one of those who criticise some aspect or other of capitalism but would never dream of getting rid of it.

Negative thinking

Why do people continue to place their trust in politicians when it’s obvious they’ve no answer to world problems?

Who really believes that crime, pollution, unemployment, the health service etc, would be worse if politicians weren’t in charge?

Most people know that politicians are “economical with the truth", and that many are careerists — yet continue to vote for one party against another on the basis that they are the ‘lesser evil". No wonder society is in such a state with this negative thinking!

The problem has now become so entrenched that anyone who challenges this apathetic status quo is immediately branded a crank. With this last thought in mind, therefore, the Socialist Party asks you not to believe a word we say! Rather we would ask you to consider what we say, and then make up you own mind. Fair enough?

Sting in the Tail: Their Problems . . . (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Problems . . .

David Mellor's little lapse certainly hogged the headlines, but another story concerning more serious lapses by political leaders was tucked away inside The Guardian (25 July).

Professor Hugh Freeman, a prominent psychiatrist, told a meeting of fellow shrinks In Dublin that world statesmen have often been:

Incapable of exercising normal decision-making powers through abnormalities of brain functioning.

According to the Prof., Prime Minister Anthony Eden was heavily into booze and drugs during the 1956 Suez crisis and "was not fit to be In charge of national affairs at that time”: US President Woodrow Wilson was "severely mentally handicapped" for the last year of his term: Stalin ended up "so irrational" that he could have started World War 3, while JFK was almost certainly taking steroids and amphetamines during the Cuban missile crisis. The Profs case is made and he didn’t even mention Hitler!

As the poet wisely put it:

Great men are great In our eyes -

While we kneel.

Let us rise!

. . . Our Solution

Is it any wonder that 'World Statesmen" go barmy? Consider the hassle George Bush faces over the proposed sale of 5 billion dollars worth of US fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

If the deal goes through he risks outraging the Israelis and, in this election year, the Jewish American vote, if it doesn’t go through then 30,000 defence industry jobs will be lost along with who knows how many votes.

Of course, he could buy-off the Israelis and their supporters by granting Israel the 10 billion dollar loan guarantees he has been holding out on, but this will not pacify the American arms control groups: how, they ask, can Bush claim to be promoting Middle East peace and sell arms there at the same time?

All heads of government constantly face such mind-bending problems: let's save the poor souls from their mental anquish by relieving them of all that decision-making and simply re-organise society for the benefit of humanity.

Footloose Faldo

Most days that Scorpion gets up he is quite pleased to find a pair of boots to wear. Sometimes he feels lucky just finding his feet.

That is not the case with Nick Faldo, recent winner of the British Open Golf Championship. Mr. Faldo has been paid £100,000 a year since 1989 to wear Stylo Matchmaker shoes during televised tournaments. Turns out that the naughty Faldo wore Footjoys shoes In his recent triumph. Stylo are not best pleased.

There is talk of-some action being taken which is understandable considering Stylo's holding company lost £9 million last year.

It says a lot about capitalism when even an enjoyable pursuit like an afternoon on a golf course has been turned into just another business opportunity for the money grubbers. Everything capitalism touches It spoils.

That's History

Are you baffled by the complexity of the ethnic mix of Eastern Europe and how it got that way? Then Malcolm Bradbury's description of an imaginary Eastern European country in his satirical novel "Rates of Exchange" could give you a clue:

It is a land that has . . . been pummelled, fought over, raped, pillaged, conquered and oppressed by the endless invaders who, from every direction, have swept and jostled through this all too accessible landscape. Swedes and Medes, Prussians and Russians, Asians and Thracians, Tartars and Cassocks, Mortars and Turds, Indeed almost every tribe or race specialist In pillage and rape, have been here . . . and left behind their imprint, their customs, their faiths, their architecture, their genes . . . And so its culture Is a melting pot, Its language a pot-pourri, Its people a salad.

So how do those "ethnic-cleansers" square all that with their racial nonsense?

All In The Game

Labour and Conservatives are fond of pretending that they are radically different from each other. Really, of course, it is all a bit of a game.

John Biffen, Tory MP writing in The Guardian (21 July) and discussing John Smith's future prospects had this to say:

He will have to provide a convincing policy alternative . . . He will be under great constraint to do this particularly as Labour's public spending and interest rates policies broadly reflect those of the Conservatives.

It Never Fails

Recently we saw a poster for an SWP meeting entitled "Will The Economy Ever Recover?" We saw it too late to hear what the speaker had to say, but our answer to that question is, yes, the economy will recover.

This will happen for several reasons: One is that the present slump will eventually bring down interest rates to the point where companies find it attractive enough to borrow in order to invest: another is that growing unemployment exerts downward pressure on wages and this will also attract employers.

Then the property crash means that factory, warehouse and office space can be had cheaply, and because of production cut-backs stocks will become depleted and need replacing, while companies will be able to buy the plant and machinery of bankrupt competitors at knock-down prices.

Factors like these will encourage capital to invest again in production because of the prospects for bigger profits and the economy will have recovered. Every slump contains the seed of the next boom and vice-versa.

Sting in the Tail: Suffer the little children (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Suffer the little children

Stephen Dorrell, the health secretary, is expected to order health regions to give more priority to paediatric intensive care beds after reports that numbers have fallen dangerously low.

In one of the worst cases, Nicholas Geldard, aged 10, died from a brain haemorrhage last December after being taken to four hospitals and across the Pennines in a snowstorm because no bed could be found for him.

Mr Dorrell’s action could be less than compassionate, however, for according to the Sunday Telegraph (19 May):

“He will also expect at least 33 of the beds to be opened by the winter, when demand is at its highest and to avoid any scandals in the run-up to the general election. ”

This is another example of the cynical contempt the Tory Party and its "Torygraph" supporters display towards the health care of the working class.

Ways of seeing

The 60th anniversary of the Spitfire, one of Britain’s World War Two aircraft, had one Jonathan Glancey rhapsodising over its “beauty” in the Independent (8 May).

He informed us that the Spitfire was “one of the most beautiful machines made”. It was “glamorous, romantic, balletic”, and in case we still hadn’t got the message:

“The spirit of the Spitfire is deeply embedded in our culture, a machine that somehow speaks of cricket, the sonnets of Keats . . ."

All this tripe about a machine designed to kill and destroy, a weapon in British capitalism’s struggle to hold onto its empire, markets and place as a world plunderer. Can something like this really be beautiful?

For us, a kidney machine or even the humble washing machine, which at least reduces drudgery, are far, far more beautiful than the Spitfire and every other instrument of death and destruction.

Utopian “Socialists”

The syllabus of the Socialist Scholars Conference held in New York City in April had 42 speakers listed to speak on 11 subjects under the general heading "Two Cheers for Utopia—Re-imagining Socialism".

This looked promising; after all, when scholars get together to talk about “socialism" they invariably mean schemes for patching-up capitalism through programmes of reforms. Could this really be a conference to discuss genuine socialism?

Even more promising was the statement in the syllabus that:

". . . we believe a little utopia is precisely what our society needs. "

Alas, further reading revealed that for these scholars “Re-imagining Socialism" amounted to such “outlandish” proposals as a guaranteed income, opposition to privatisation and welfare cuts, etc.

This is utopia? Compared to our vision of a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use, the imagining of the SSC is very limited indeed.

Spot that tune

The terms of reference of the Hearing committee of inquiry into the future of further education in Britain spell out what the inquiry’s priorities will be.

The terms emphasise the need for universities to provide graduates with the skills required by industry, and although the need to be internationally competitive gets ten mentions, scholarship gets only four.

Anyone who is shocked by such priorities should remember that this is capitalism, and what is good for business will inevitably come first. This is why a committee dealing with education draws five of its sixteen members from business.

The fact is that the cost of education is borne by our masters, and isn’t it still true that who pays the piper calls the tune?

What Sid wasn’t told

Remember Sid? He was the creation of the ad-men in the Tories’ campaign to persuade your ordinary punter to buy shares in the privatised industries in the hope that ever-rising dividends and share prices would bring him to love the capitalist system.

Of course, Sid wasn’t told that owning shares in a company didn’t mean it would never sack him, and far from having a say in company policy he wouldn’t stand a chance against the big institutional investors. Now, the directors want shot of him altogether because he is a “costly pest” (Independent, 14 May).

Yes, lots of Sids did buy shares, about £ 1,000 worth on average, but mostly they flogged ’em, took the money and ran—in 1987 British Gas had 4.4 million shareholders but now has only 1.7 million.

Sid was only the front-man in yet another foolish attempt to achieve the impossible—making capitalism operate in the interest of the vast majority.

Hanson hits out

Lord Hanson, multi-millionaire turned social pundit has penned a blistering attack on “destructive journalism” in an article in the Spectator (16 May).

The noble lord writes “Destructive journalism fosters the believe that politicians routinely evade the truth and break their promises."

Politicians telling porkies? We are shocked at the suggestion. Broken promises? Tut, tut. What calumny.

But Hanson is really upset at what is written about businessmen: “They are castigated for seeking profit, damaging the environment and much else besides.”

As if businessmen would stoop so low, me lord!

Sting in the Tail: The restrictive society (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The restrictive society

Capitalism is a divisive society that not only puts worker against capitalist in a fierce class struggle. It also drives worker against worker in competition for work and wages.

A recent example of this is illustrated in the Independent (24 December) under the headline “Bring back pass laws, says black South Africans”. This report dealt with the influx of illegal immigrants to South Africa from Zaire, Mozambique and other African countries.

"Pass laws may make a comeback in Nelson Mandela's new democratic South Africa. Many black people who were victimised by them under apartheid in the past are now looking with favour on controls for immigrants. "

What a miserable society capitalism is. In the last two months of 1994 the South African government had deported 50,000 workers back to Mozambique. The same sorry story applies to Mexican workers deported from the USA. Capitalism is a world-wide system of exploitation and restriction.

Only inside a socialist system of society will men and women be free to roam the world as they desire.

Shared fantasy

First, the Fantasy Football league and now the Fantasy Share League, a creation of BBC2's Working Lunch programme. Players are invited to compete with the City of London's professionals in forecasting how shares will perform and to back their judgment by pretending to buy and sell them.

But what chance can the amateur forecasters have against the professionals? One clue was provided by Mick Clarke, Stock Market Correspondent of the Times, who confessed on Working Lunch that he had been plugging Asil Nadir’s Polly Peck company prior to its collapse.

And an article in the Guardian (27 December) reviewed how the experts had fared in 1994:

“Most of the City’s leading ‘gurus’ are probably wishing they could have eaten their words — especially those issued with great confidence this time last year. ”

When it comes to predicting how any market will perform, the only real difference between professionals and amateurs is that the former get paid for doing it while the latter do it for nothing.

Muddle-headed Ken

Ken Coates, Labour MEP, is upset over Tony Blair’s plans to change Clause Four of the Labour Party’s constitution. You can tell this from his comments on Blair and the Party “modernisers’’ whom he described as:

“bastards and shits who are going to walk past the unemployed” (Guardian, 14 January)

Does Coates really think that Clause Four, which he says “I cannot live without”, ever made a scrap of difference to unemployment under Labour governments? The fact is that every time Labour left office unemployment was higher than when it came in.

But Coates also asked an interesting question:

“How can you talk about equality and assume the permanent continuation of employers and employees?"

If he is being serious here then what is he doing in a party which, despite the presence of Clause Four, has always endorsed the production from profit system of which the employer/employee relationship is such an integral part?

Trial by torture

Kilroy on BBC1 isn’t one of Scorpion’s favourite TV programmes but the edition on 20 January was riveting stuff.

Two Tories were stuck with the task of defending the government against an angry bunch of OAP’s who complained over and over about their poverty. The luckless pair were Barbara, a County Councillor, and Daniel, a would-be Tory' MP.

And how they floundered as they tried to deal with the pensioners' flood of accusations: Barbara couldn’t even bring herself to say the word “poverty”, preferring instead “lower living standards”, while Daniel could only answer the demand for higher pensions by bleating “Where's the money to come from?” and insisting that “People should save more for their old age.”

It was a joy to see how those Tory' apologists were made to squirm by the pensioners, but the dogged way in which they defended the indefensible must have earned them the admiration of every watching politician.

Alive and kicking

Are trade unions finished? Vicious antiunion laws, large-scale unemployment plus the growth of part-time work have planted the idea among many workers that TUs can no longer produce results. These changed circumstances do mean that unions are not so effective as they once were in some activities, but they are increasingly effective in others.

For example, figures published by the TUC show that the unions won £335 million in 1993/4 in compensation for members who suffered injury or ill-health at work or were unfairly dismissed. This figure represents an eight percent increase over the previous year and is in spite of falling membership.

Socialists are the first to point to the limitation of trade unions, but their value to workers in the industrial struggle remains and should not be underestimated.

Pseudo-revolutionaries corner

In the olden days when the Communist Party used to exist they used to justify every change of “tactics" by reference to “dialectics, comrade, dialectics”. Now their mantle has fallen on the SWP whose leader Tony Cliff spouts the same gobbledegook Here he is writing about the “third stage”of the industrial struggle:

"Now we come to a problem. The level of generalisation is on the one hand quite low, but at the same time it is quite high. This sounds like a contradiction, but the contradiction is reality. ”

Eh?

Scorpion

Sting in the Tail: A sick society (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sick society

Dr. Ian Burns is Glasgow’s public health director. He has recently been commenting on the relationship between health and poverty in Glasgow. What he has to say applies to all cities:

“If we are going to do something about Glasgow's ill-health you have to confront the poverty. The Government have acknowledged there is a link between ill-health and poverty but they have always said we don't know if the one is caused by the other, ” he said.

"We are saying it is, the link is empowerment. If you are unemployed, have no educational background, and don't know where your children‘s next meat is coming from, you have the sense of the system doing things to you" (The Herald, 21 December).

The sad truth is that medical care is a commodity. If you can afford it you can get the most modern treatment immediately, but if you are poor you can join the waiting list to get treatment from underfunded overworked NHS staff.

Hard core

The term “hard-core” is popular with the press. We have read of “hard-core pornography” and “hard-core criminality”. Now the Government have found “hard-core rough sleepers”:

“In a statement. Environment Minister Robert Jones said the Government's winter shelter programme, with up to 350 places in Central London, made it unnecessary for anyone . . . to have to sleep on the streets this winter'. ”

"It is clear, ” the Minister added, "that street level agencies are finding themselves trying to help a hard core of rough sleepers ” (Observer, 18 December)

However, Homeless Network, an umbrella group of 30 charities, report that 288 people were sleeping rough in late November, a seven percent increase compared with May and estimate that during the past year 3,000 spent part or all of their time sleeping in the streets in the survey area alone.

Government ministers climbing out of their chauffeur-driven cars for a night out at the Covent Garden Opera may console themselves that the street-sleepers strewn around are “hard-core rough sleepers”, but socialists know that not only has capitalism a hard-core but that it is an extremely bitter fruit for the poor, disabled and homeless.

What a wally!

The shallowness and double standards of politicians were epitomised by John Major’s insistence that schools should conduct daily “acts of worship” on a broadly Christian basis.

"Mr. Major said daily worship for all pupils allowed them to explore their own beliefs and helped build community spirit and shared values, and reinforced positive attitudes" (BBC2 Ceefax, 17 December).

What that bit about acts of worship (ugh) allowing pupils to “explore their own beliefs” really amounts to is the attempted indoctrination of young minds, or what was called “brainwashing” when Nazis and the so-called communists did it.

And just how do these acts of worship build “community spirit and shared values” in, say, Northern Ireland? Mind you. Major will hear plenty of “positive attitudes” being reinforced by the hangers, floggers, xenophobes and other Christian worshippers at Tory conferences.

Whether Major thought up such rubbish by himself or merely parroted what some Tory hack told him, doesn’t matter, because he is damned either way.

A sorry sight

On BBC News (22 December) an entire workforce marched arm-in-arm through Liverpool streets singing “Here We Go”. So full of patriotic fervour were they that they waved and even wore the Union Jack. This was obviously a big celebration.

And what was it all about? Only that Bryant and.May, Britain’s last match factory, had closed down and this was the workers' way of marking the occasion.

Perhaps these workers will reflect on what good their patriotism did them when they signed-on the following day.

The sporting life

According to the dictionary definition, sport is “pleasant pastime; amusement, diversion”. So what are we to make of newspaper headlines that scream “Doping Ban”, “Bribery allegations”, and “Football Manager Took Bungs”?

Just as the financial pages are concerned with Insider Dealing, Dirty Tricks Takeover Bids and all the other skulduggery' of the City, so athletics, cricket and football reporters are as much concerned with cheating, doping and bribery as with reporting sporting events.

The truth is that capitalism is a social system based on profit, greed and deceit. Sport inside capitalism is big business, so it is no wonder that it reflects the chicanery of the system.

In a socialist society human beings would be able to enjoy sport as a “pleasant pastime”; amusement; diversion". That is impossible inside the present production-for-profit system.

Canadian capers

Some Canadian students have invited Tommy Sheridan of Scottish Militant Labour to Canada to speak about socialism.

At the Euro-elections last June Sheridan’s manifesto, besides being full of pictures of himself and claims that he is “the people's champion”, “hammer of the Tories”, etc., carried an article entitled “What Is Socialism?”.

According to this, production will still be for sale on the market and money, banks and finance will remain. What it all added up to is capitalism’s buying and selling system along with the usual idealist’s illusion that it can be “planned and run for the benefit of everybody”.

If those Canadian students want to know about socialism then Sheridan is the last one to tell them.

Sting in the Tail: Warning to our readers (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Warning to our readers

Shock horror! A spate of muggings in what was once ‘appy ‘ampstead has resulted in some very valuable Rolex watches being nicked.

Several of the well-heeled fraternity including one of Michael Heseltine’s daughters and ex-model Jilly Johnson have had their prized timepieces snatched from their persons. Some of the watches cost as much as £20,000 and one is described as being “diamond encrusted' (Guardian, 29 April.)

In a cunning and very well publicised attempt to surprise the muggers, decoy policemen wearing fake designer clothes are parading around Hampstead sporting imitation Rolex watches provided by the company which is, naturally, anxious to see that its customers are not discouraged from buying the real thing.

So our warning to all our readers is: do not go up to Hampstead flaunting your £20,000 Rolex as you could easily be mistaken for a policeman.

Somebody tell them

What happens if you put a lot of predatory fish, large and small, into a fish tank and leave them to get on with it? That’s easy, the little fish get gobbled-up by the big ‘uns.

This is what has happened in Britain’s passenger bus industry since it was deregulated in 1985. The government’s declared aim was to end “public monopolies” run by municipal authorities and “open up the industry to competition”.

For a while, this is what happened as lots of new operators emerged to compete with privatised ex-municipal bus companies for a share of the lucrative market.

But since then hundreds of the smaller companies have been taken over or forced out of business by biggies like Stagecoach or Badgerline, and the end result will be a few big companies each aiming for the legal maximum of 25 percent of the market.

The government and its think-tank advisers completely failed to foresee the so-predictable consequences of their policy, but shouldn’t capitalism’s loudest advocates at least understand how the bloody system works?

Natural unemployment?

Socialists are used to dealing with well-paid apologists for capitalism’s shortcomings. Politicians who tell us that it is natural to be aggressive and acquisitive. Priests who tell us that it is natural to have poverty amidst plenty.

Now we have another piece of “natural” nonsense. The economic journalist Evan Davis in the Independent (20 April) wrote a column entitled “How Much Unemployment Comes Naturally?”. He reviewed various “expert” opinion on what the natural figure for unemployment might be. One of these groups of experts, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, comes up with a figure of 6.4 percent. He favours a figure “of about 5 or 6 percent”; this is based on comparing the commercial property market with the labour market.

“There are significant ‘hiring and firing ’ costs in both—so companies usually don’t hire property by the day any more than they hire labour by the day. Well, I am told by those who work in it that a typical period in that market might see about 6 percent of buildings unemployed, or vacant. ”

One pleasing aspect about the establishment of socialism is that such experts as the CEPR and economic journalists will be freed from their arduous research and allowed to pursue some useful occupation.

Poverty and TB

The British Medical Journal recently carried a report that the incidence of tuberculosis is rising. In the last five years there has been a 12 percent increase.

“Anyone can catch tuberculosis but it is more likely to spread from person to person in overcrowded conditions and individuals who are badly nourished or otherwise in poor health are less liable to fight off the infection, ” says the British Medical Association. Dr John Moore-Gillon and Dr Malcolm Law of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, have now discovered that TB is 10 times more common in the poorer tenth of the population than the richest tenth " (Herald, 13 April.)

The increase of unemployment and homelessness has led to an increase of this poverty-related illness. Just another example of the needless suffering of a section of the working class because capitalism is more concerned with profits than public health.

Who are the immigrants?

The Observer (30 April) under the headline “Jospin hopes to recruit Le Pen’s rag-tag army” reported that the so-called Socialist Party in France were eager to get some of the votes cast in the first ballot for the National Front candidate.

“Pierre Buccelato, 60, is one such voter. A former builder who found himself among France’s three million unemployed when recession struck, he now sells flowers on the edge of a sprawling estate . . . Railing against the foreigners who he claims are awarded council flats ahead of ‘French people ’ he said he once voted for Mitterand but now agrees with Jean-Marie Pen’s National Front. ‘Immigration is why we have no work. Get rid of the immigrants and we’ll get our jobs back,’ he insisted, pausing to admit that he himself was an Italian immigrant who had arrived in France in 1957.”

All workers must seek wages wherever they can. Blaming “foreign” workers for unemployment is stupid. In the world recession of the 1930s there was hardly any immigration to France but there was high unemployment. As long as workers support politicians like Le Pen, Chirac or Jospin capitalism will continue, with all its problems.