Teachers are workers (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Various journals—the Times Educational Supplement and The Guardian among them—have affected some surprise at findings recently published by National Opinion Polls following their enquiry into teachers’ opinions and practices concerning such matters as “pupil power”, corporal punishment, school prayers, housing, private interests, and so on.

It is clear from the results that teachers, by and large, continue to take a very conventional view of these and other related matters.

Quite apart from the chimera of “pupil” or “parent power” (what exactly does this mean within the context of capitalist society?) and ignoring the sheer irrelevance of badminton as a game much favoured by teachers, one may well ask what is so surprising about this “discovery”?

So 75 per cent. of teachers want school prayers. Well, so (almost certainly) do most parents. A majority of teachers wish to retain the grammar schools. Again, so did (and still do) many of the British public: always provided, of course, that their children were enabled to attend them. 72 per cent. of teachers wish to retain the power to cane. Well, go and ask “the man in the street”. If you pursue the matter with him you may well be informed that he believes in bringing back the birch, too, to say nothing of capital punishment.

An so the list goes on. The publicity given to such noisy leftist minority groupings as “Rank and File” (the black sheep of the National Union of Teachers), the nonsense talked about “pupil governors”, and the emergence of pupils’ unions, have had the dual effect of deluding the innocent and giving the more astute of capitalism’s apologists the excuse to strangle at birth any signs of independent thinking among teachers, pupils or parents. By way of justification, all they have to do is to point to “dangerous revolutionaries in the classroom”—great stuff for the gutter press, needless to add.

To a socialist, particularly if he happens to be inside the education system, it must come as no surprise at all to learn that in these as in most other matters the teachers are, in reality, no different from other members of the working class. After all, they are just as much a part of the capitalist system as any other section. Which means, of course, that they are just as vulnerable to an uncritical acceptance of capitalism’s mores together with its repressions and its coercive discipline.

NOP’s horse never really ran. The most that can be claimed for the whole exercise is that it may have helped some to understand how capitalism first creates and then exploits its Aunt Sallys.

R.W.C.

Blogger's Note:

One can never be 100% sure about these things but I believe that 'R.W.C.' was the regular Socialist Standard writer, Richard Cooper, Why he opted for just using his initials for this particular article, I do not know but he would regularly write on the subject of education  — he was a teacher — in the pages of the Socialist Standard. 

For more background on Cooper, he wrote an entertaining article in the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard on 'Becoming a socialist'.

Pathfinders: ‘Bear with me a moment…’ (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is an everyday story you will be all-too familiar with, the attempt to resolve a problem via a call centre. You navigate a complex phone menu, whose options don’t match your actual problem. You wait for a human representative while forced to listen to lift music or worse, banging club anthems on a loop. A human at last responds and a pause ensues as you turn the volume back up in a panic that the human might ring off. You explain your problem, but naturally you are talking to the wrong department and need to be transferred. You are put back onto the banging club anthems – clearly selected to make your day happier and brighter – until eventually another human speaks, and you patiently begin to explain the problem again from the start. The human operator is sympathetic, and proposes to investigate the problem for you. In order to do this, you must be returned to the banging club anthems. This continues for twenty minutes and then… you are disconnected.

This is only the beginning. Like the 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow, whose strapline is ‘Live. Die. Repeat’, you start again from zero. Over and over. But you get smarter. You can predict what’s going to happen. Now you beg the operator ‘Please please, don’t put me on hold, because I keep being disconnected.’ But the operator is unable to proceed with any investigation while you’re still on the line. Two simultaneous phone calls are somehow beyond modern call-centre technology. It’s back to the bangin’ tunes.

What started as a simple technical problem now metastasises into existential angst. You feel like you’re shouting into a void, set adrift in a boundless universe of anonymous amnesia. If you’re not literally shouting at the disembodied operator by now, it’s only due to your steely self-control and determination not to offload your stress and frustration onto a fellow worker.

Though it seems impossible that a solution can ever emerge from this Dantesque corporate inferno, one is arrived at, and a call-out visit arranged. The visit does not materialise. Back into the club-anthems universe you go. It seems all the call-outs were cancelled, with no explanation available. They’re very sorry about that, something must have gone wrong at their end. But they can offer an appointment later next week?

This story, or something like it, is well known to everyone. But it has another side, which you won’t know unless you’ve been one of the 800,000 people who actually work in a call centre. At the other end of the line, your anonymous script-reciting operator is going through their own version of emotional torture.

It is hard to think of any type of work that’s more stressful, frustrating, dispiriting and disempowering than being a call-centre worker. You probably got the job via an agency, because you were desperate, an agency which you know for a fact gets paid for your work at double the rate the agency pays you. You arrive on shift to be directed to any one of fifty call desks, given a sheet of permissible responses and actions, and told that your calls are recorded and monitored by a supervisor. Half your calls are customers calling back after they were disconnected. They have no idea who they talked to before, and you have no way of finding out either. So they have to start again from scratch. You can pull up their customer file, but you are not permitted to enter notes on the file for follow-up. You attempt to resolve the problem, though they beg you not to put them on hold, and when you get back to the customer the line has gone dead…

Four hours of this and then a lunch break, where people slump like galley slaves, too drained to talk. Then you start again, trying to sound fresh and helpful. The customers do their best to be polite but are often at the end of their tether. Sometimes you can tell they’re in tears. Your heart goes out to them. You want to help, you really do. And it would be so easy. If you could just assign yourself ‘ownership’ of their case, you could follow it up, even over multiple shifts, and call the customer back when you’d resolved the problem. But the system does not permit such ownership. That would entail responsibility, and with it the leverage to demand a higher wage. You can’t even leave yourself a Post-it note to call back and check on progress, because hot-desking means never getting the same desk twice. Even so, Post-it notes proliferate like blossoms on each computer screen, all scribbled with customer information and bank details, only to be swept away into bin bags by cleaners every night. In the morning the centre is empty of notes. Amnesia is normal operating procedure. If the cleaners were less honest, they could be cleaning out people’s bank accounts, such is the lack of corporate oversight, and bosses’ indifference.

If workers react with hostility to ‘call rage’ or, which is more likely and far worse, agree with the customer that the company is shit, they are sacked on the spot. If they protest to the supervisor, they are sacked on the spot. They are ‘casual’. They don’t get rights. They don’t get a say. They don’t need brains. Staff burnout is massive. Staff turnover is massive. Nobody stands this work for long.

The companies don’t need to treat call-centre workers and customers this badly, of course. It’s all by design. It’s ‘cost-effective’, which means more profits. Capitalist customer service, turbocharged with digital automation, hollows the life out of human communication and replaces it with impotent frustration for both parties. 83 percent of UK call-centre workers report negative mental health effects.

There’s nothing special about this story. It’s not big or newsworthy. It’s mundane, everyday, just one among a million trivial, undramatic tales of humdrum humiliation in capitalism.

No wonder people riot.

Paddy Shannon

Caught in the safety net (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

There may be trouble ahead . . . if there is one thing capitalism can be relied upon to do it is to create the circumstances in which the need to have one kind of insurance or another is virtually essential. Robbery, burglary, car theft  . . . the list is endless

Curiously, the day the news broke there was a rare feeling of fellowship buzzing round the office. The official statement came through the internal e-mail system, though some heard it first on the early morning news. Groups of us talked about the future, looked eagerly out of the window at the cameramen and, later, crowded round the first edition of the evening ‘paper with its ominous headline. On the day we heard five thousand of us would lose our jobs we felt strangely excited.

Sun Alliance and Royal Insurance announced their proposed merger on 3 May. Within two years this will create Britain’s largest general insurer, with world-wide premiums of £9,386 million, assets of £55,051 million and pre-tax profits of £1,026 million (based on 1995 figures). Both companies will save an estimated £175 million by 1998, at a cost of 4,000 jobs in the UK and another 1,000 world-wide.

The history of insurance is crisscrossed with company mergers and takeovers, more so than other professions because each insurer is run using very similar methods to chase after the same portions of a particular market

Moulded by markets

A combination of market forces, legislation and changes in social responsibility has defined the rule of insurance within capitalism. In Britain, most of us have some involvement with it through household cover, life assurance or motor policies (compulsory since 1930). As a worker or even a customer in a shop we are likely to be covered by an insurance policy. Indeed, the different status of workers, customers and owners in relation to companies is reinforced by the way policies classify people. If you suffer an injury at work you will be ensured compensation through an Employers' Liability policy. Your legal position in either circumstance depends on your relationship to the owner of the property where the accident occurred. As this type of insurance has contributed to the development of worker and consumer rights, it also represents how the working class is financially dependent on company owners.

Because it relies so heavily on the fortunes of other businesses for its income, the insurance profession is a useful barometer of the state of the economy on the whole. Insurers have only recently recovered their losses caused by the 1987 hurricane and the heaviest years of the recession. Since then, the cautious mood of the ’90s’ business activities has predictably lead to rationalisation.

Insurers will reduce staff numbers sooner than increase them and policies will only be issued if they are expected to be directly profitable. Even those committed to the system are realising insurance has moved away from pretending to be a public service towards a more openly cut-throat side of capitalism. In its place in Socialism, the emergency services would have to be expanded or another organisation created to deal with the longterm effects of accidents or natural disasters. But the whole range of insurances which deal with the flow of money and owner/worker/customer relations — theft cover, liability cover, health insurance, car insurance, life assurance — would become irrelevant and left for the history' books. Current policies exclude any change in the insured’s circumstances in the event of major social changes, including revolution. Those who devise the policy wordings have realised the concept of insurance is only tied up with the current system and not a permanent way of dealing with property, even if this isn’t the image they publicise.

International capital

Large companies need a rigid structure to function, aimed at encouraging maximum efficiency with the minimum of costs. Each of the major insurers are organised in similar ways. Most have stakes in several countries, and usually continents. In each country a head office will decide company strategy and oversee the running of several regional offices. The bulk of the company’s income (excluding that made from company-owned shares or interest on loans) will come from policies underwritten here, often through intermediaries of varying sizes. There may also be smaller offices acting as sales outlets. Behind the scenes will be the support facilities responsible for computer systems, administration, surveying, accounting, stationery, maintenance, distribution and catering. All these aspects of the insurance company are interdependent, although there will be another side to the company which has little contact with anyone except senior management. This is the “group headquarters” where directors and owners of the company observe its activities world-wide and contribute to group strategy and image.

It would be impossible for one person to comprehend all the systems in place to perpetuate such massive organisations, not only from within but also to provide the energy and resources they require. Throughout is the attitude that “the company” is an entity greater than the sum of its parts. Staff will answer the phone in the name of the department or company rather than themselves, and speak in terms of working for the company rather than in it. This ethos runs through many organisations including those not based around profits like charities and political parties. But for the worker without a vested interest beyond his or her job security this attitude is essential to divert attention from the company’s real identity—its shareholders and directors. Tasks which would otherwise be pointless or objectionable are justified by being in the interests of “the company”. Staff accept they are secondary to this mythical entity, although initiatives promoting the idea of a “customer-focused” organisation attempt to give it a human helping face.

Top down commands

The competition which capitalism needs to function is reinforced in the insurance world through staff grading systems. A worker’s grade is related to his or her age and experience, and the level and complexity of their job.

Coupled with the employee being delegated their own responsibilities and workload through it, the grading system gives what could be called their “political niche”. Their position in the company dictates what information they receive, to what extent they can voice their opinions, how they speak to people and even who they speak to. Offices are riddled with ladders of authority and chains of command. Most people aspire to having a “higher” position and will work to try and achieve it, but there is a universal acceptance of the status quo which people only try to work within rather than improve. Strikes are unheard of and unions have little power and low membership, particularly among younger workers. This situation has arisen because working in insurance is isolated and comfortable compared to many other professions, particularly in the larger companies, and the “them-and-us” attitude is weakened when senior management are beyond reach and lower management are working in the same office as other staff.

The lowest graded workers are usually those who deal directly with customers and perform the basic functions of underwriting. However, managers are reluctant to give decision-making authority to them, partly because of their inexperience and partly because it would undermine their own authority. Therefore you have a situation where the lower grades constantly have to refer to others for authorisation even when they may be perfectly competent to carry out the decision themselves. The insurance profession thrives on this sort of inequality, even though it is a constant frustration to those who realise the situation, everything comes down from above — decisions, information, workload, attitudes, and there is little the average worker can realistically do to improve this for themselves, except try to make the orders rather than take them. Women usually suffer more from this system than men. Although more are reaching senior positions than before, the management of insurance companies is still an “old boy’s network”, and most women don’t fit into the boozing chumminess which lies behind many of the important decisions.

Profit patter

As with most areas of work, insurance has its own technical terms. An esoteric environment leads to a particular method of speech, which in this ease takes workers away from emotive, practical thoughts and makes them think and talk in vague, inhuman terms like “competitiveness”, “the market” and “profitability”. The nature of insurance is to regard things — factories, cars, people — as economic units and the only way to do this is to speak and think in a particular way. For example, an underwriter calculating a car insurance premium wouldn’t think “Is this driver responsible and safe enough to drive without being likely to cause accidents?” He or she would learn to think “Is this driver safe and responsible so they won’t incur any claims, which would cost this company money?” Personnel strategists are keen to develop the idea of the “corporate worker”— someone who answers the phone in the accepted way, is perfectly organised, stress-free and never makes mistakes. Courses are run all the time to develop this kind of attitude, intended to make workers think about the interests of the company before themselves. There is also increasing pressure to study for insurance qualifications, available up to degree standard, which give an understanding of the profession around which to base a method of thinking. This form of education doesn’t encourage workers to think about any alternative ways of dealing with property and losses, and therefore only aims to perpetuate the system.

Despite the social engineering, workgroups within insurance aren’t motivated primarily by profit because it remains abstract to those below section head level. Older workers are more likely to be shareholders, have profit targets to meet and would have been in the profession long enough to be conditioned by it. Most lower-grade workers believe profits are a good thing for the company and themselves, reflected in bonuses and job security. But their motivation primarily stems from wanting to be efficient and responsible, and in the long term to further their position in the company. This style of work is about achieving what is expected or asked of you, or more, and not thinking about the system at large or any alternatives. The differences between what motivates workers of different ages echoes the grading system and prevents the existence of a common goal, which would be the prime motivator in socialism.

As insurers compete with one another for business, departments compete for a greater share of the company’s profits and workers compete with each other for jobs. For those caught inside it, the insurance world is a mass of internal politics, delegation, procedures, competition, customer focus, corporate image and above all, money around which everything else must revolve.

Clive Hendry

50 Years Ago: The Waning Status of the "Intellectual" (1996)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not many years ago the "intellectual," with his "middle class" delusion, was convinced that he had a fundamental identity of interest with the capitalist, but experience began to raise doubts; some sections, including bank clerks, commenced to form defensive organisations. That was a step forward. Lately there has been a giant stride forward.. For the first time bank clerks have engaged in a strike on a large scale. The Irish bank officials have been on strike for five weeks, coming at last into the main stream of the class struggle and taking a belated step towards recognising the fundamental identity of interest of all those who depend for their livelihood upon the sale of their mental and physical energies. In the not far distant future the other grades of workers afflicted with the "middle class" obsession will be forced to accept a similar outlook and the halo surrounding the "intellectual" will finally disappear.

Gilmac.

[From the article, The Waning Status of the "Intellectual", by Gilbert McClatchie, Socialist Standard September 1946.]

The Passing Show: H.M.S. Hampshire (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

H.M.S. Hampshire

The beginning of September and H.M.S. Hampshire, guided missile destroyer, lies at anchor just off Torquay. A day or two later, she is joined by several more warships of the home fleet. If you like, you can have a boat trio around the grey monsters and view—at a distance, of course—their wicked death dealing paraphernalia.

These ships have just finished exercises off the South West Coast. They are a timely reminder of the constant development under capitalism of more and more horrifying weapons; for these are just about the last word in modern fighting craft, although they will probably be out of date in a few years’ time. Capitalist politicians may prattle about efforts for peace, disarmament, test ban treaties and the like, but sincerity has never been their strong point. Anyway, sincerity will not remove the conflicting interests of private property which make armaments necessary. So Lord Hailsham signs a treaty in Moscow, and almost in the same breath, the government announces that another warship is to be built—this time an aircraft carrier costing around £50 millions,

Militant Bank Managers

Whatever next! There were enough disdainfully raised eyebrows and tongue cluckings when the teachers struck for one day last year. But now the bank managers, of all people! The Daily Herald of September 7th tells us of the first of a series of weekend strikes by these men and their staffs, employed by the Manchester and Salford Trustee Savings Bank. Apparently it’s a very gentlemanly affair with courteous picketing outside the branches by none other than the managers themselves.

But strip away the niceties of etiquette and what is the strike over? Why, the same old thing, of course—pay and conditions. The bank staffs are pressing for “proper negotiating machinery” and have reached the end of their tether waiting for a move from their employers. “…. even gentlemen get their backs up occasionally,” commented one bank man, bitterly.

It is certainly interesting, this show of militancy among “professional” workers. And at the risk of being called priggish, it does go to support something we have always said. Arbitration courts and joint councils may be all very well up to a point, but it is the strike (or the positive threat of it) which gingers up the negotiations. In fact, it is the only weapon which workers have in their struggle with the employers, although it cannot be used indiscriminately, of course. This hard truth has begun to dawn on some of the bank employees, and they are a living denial of the claim sometimes heard nowadays that the strike weapon is out of date. It will never be out of date as long as we have capitalism.

Auto-intoxication

Roaring and stinking its way merrily across the length and breadth of the land goes the motor car. It pours from the production lines to swell the enormous tide of tinplate on the already overcrowded roads. In attempts to cope with its insatiable appetite, workers’ backyards are sliced in half as motorways are pushed through with ruthless urgency. And up, up, up, mounts the toll of death and injury in its wake. No wonder Dr. Bergen Evans wrote a long and bitter denunciation of it eight years ago in The Spoor of Spooks.

But it is not only Dr. Evans who is concerned at the encroachment of the motor car. Brickbats have been thrown at Transport Minister Marples over his plan for “pedestrian control” experiments in selected areas. “The Marples Matchsticks” it was contemptuously labelled by the Daily Mail, after the illuminated robot who will show you how to walk across the road when the way is clear. Failure to observe the rules may cost you a £20 fine and the Mail is very piqued at the whittling away of pedestrians’ rights which this will involve.

Now the motor car is no longer a luxury. Indeed, it is an essential to many workers in holding down their jobs. More than eight million are on the roads and the number is expected to go on increasing. So the car manufacturers have done nicely out of it, although no one will expect British Railways to be very pleased. Neither will some of the shop owners, who will no doubt echo the Mail’s sentiments, because growing pressure against pedestrians might well discourage sales. This has in fact happened in some of the streets recently restricted to one-way traffic.

There is nothing very straightforward about the traffic problem, because it is surrounded by all sorts of interests tugging all ways, a familiar enough feature under capitalism. It exists, too, against the background of speed and yet more speed. For as any Socialist knows, the time factor is all important in capitalist production and colours all our outlook And when looked at from this angle, Socialism would be worth establishing: only just to let us slow down and take a breather.

Eddie Critchfield

Whatever happened to the middle class? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most comical programme on the radio today, is, without a doubt, that uproarious piece of fatuous nonsense known as “Any Questions”.

Week after week a panel of so-called experts, or notorious personages, attempt to answer questions put by members of the audience.

Conversely the most profoundly philosophical item on the “box” is frequently the one professing to be ludicrous.

More often than not, the jokes of “the comedians” on TV are priceless little cameos highlighting the catastrophes and calamities of modern latter-day working-class life.

But on “Any Questions” we have the best humour of all, unconscious, unintended, spontaneous. A question was asked: “What is happening to the Middle Class and what should they (the Middle Class) do about it” The result was side-splitting, a smasher, especially since the “panel” consisted of those well- known knockabouts, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Hailsham and Lord George Brown, plus Lady Barnett. Muggeridge jumped in with a broadside: the middle class he said are licked, powerless, helpless, they are being wiped out, done down, and there is nothing they can do but put up with it.

Then there was comedian George Brown’s go. In that absurdly pompous manner which he fondly imagines is impressive, he proceeded to babble more self-contradictory nonsense in a few minutes than anyone would think possible. The audience quickly told him as much. The place of the Middle Class today, he squeaked, has been taken by the working class. The miners, dockers, and car workers get over one hundred pounds a week; redundancy pay, social security, free health benefits and other advantages. The middle class is now the inferior class and the working class better off (than the “middle” lot.) These statements were apparently based on what has happened to “his kids”. My kids, he wailed, are (or were) members of the middle class with (and here he was expressing a common-place fallacy) “professional training’' but now much worse off than the dockers or miners.

One is tempted to ask why, if dockers are doing so well, his kids didn’t go in for it; but this never came up.

People in the audience tried to tell George that if all that had happened was a change of the names and addresses (middle for working) then no social change had taken place, but he only lost his temper.

Then it was Hailsham’s turn. We are not licked, he raved and ranted, we shall fight: wherever these great juggernauts, the TUC and the unions, challenge us we shall join together, and we shall win. Fine fighting words, “Hoggy”!

Rather unkindly (impudent workers) the next question was: “What do the members of the panel think are the qualifications for being on it?” Predictably enough this produced dead silence from the usually loquacious professional windbags. So much so, that Jacobs the question-master had to prod them. After all, they do get about £85 for the half-hour job.

Mugg said he hadn’t got any. Brown said none whatever, Hogg that he’d answered before and always tried to do his best. Likewise Lady B.

In the ensuing “Any Answer” slot supplied by listeners, a bloke wrote what Jacobs said was the shortest letter they’d ever received in twenty years. It was one word: “Ego”. And it is right. All of them, Brown, Hogg, Mugg. have no more knowledge of the economics of capitalist society than a bright fifth form schoolboy.

The one attribute they all have is boundless, mindless self-conceit; and the presumptuous conviction that most ordinary quiet people must be congenial idiots. They were all mistakenly talking about something that does not exist any more; and practically saying so without even knowing it! Especially the rubbish about “professional training.” Many kinds of workers today handle complicated equipment and require to be highly trained. Soldiers, airmen, printers, steelworkers, even a London taxi-driver whose intimate detailed knowledge of the most complicated maze in the world takes a minimum of two years to acquire.

The so-called white collar workers have joined the TUC in hundreds and thousands because, like blue- collar workers and no-collar workers, they belong to the same class. What defines a class is its relationship to the productive apparatus. In general those that are NOT capitalists are workers; whether driving a .Jumbo jet at £400.00 a week or a bus at £50.00.

What bogs many workers down on this is a failure to understand the difference between a whole class, and individuals. True, we all know cases whom we cannot slot neatly in. They are borderline cases. Every branch of knowledge has these, science could not function without them.

In biology we have the platypus: half bird — half mammal. In chemistry we have isotopes — compounds of unstable elements. “Heavy Water”: H30 not H20. No chemist has yet declared that ordinary water does not exist. In atomic physics unstable radio-active particles and anti-matter.

All these are exceptions. No biologist claims that the platypus invalidates species. So with society; individual exceptions merely confirm the general rule. Capitalism drives all workers ultimately into recognizing their class position. Once the process starts, the spread of Socialist ideas is inevitable.

There were 4,000 small bankruptcies last year; not Rolls-Royce, Leyland, Court Line or British Rail, but members of the hypothetical “Middle class” driven back to the ranks.

Members of the panel were NOT among them. They are bankrupt only in knowledge.

Horatio.

The Passing Show: The pace-makers (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pace-makers

The present uproar among those employed in the “public sector”—nurses, teachers, civil servants, and so on—at the fact that they are the chief sufferers from the Government’s pay policy, is particularly interesting to those who remember what the Labour Party and reformers generally used to say on this subject. It was once a settled belief among left-wingers that any industry or service run by the State or by a municipality would give its workers better conditions than any similar private industry or service, and that private employers would have to improve the wages and conditions they offered in order to keep their workers. So that the nationalisation of an industry would not only benefit the workers in that industry: it would benefit those in other industries as well. See, for example, Bernard Shaw in The Transition to Social Democracy, reprinted in his Essays in Fabian Socialism:

“At the very outset of the new extension of municipal industries, the question of wage will arise. A minimum wage must be fixed . . . The worst sort of sweaters will find that if they are to keep their ‘hands’, they must treat them at least as well as the municipality.”

And so forth. When these arguments were fashionable, Socialists were pointing out that since the State, and the municipalities, and the State boards, were and could only be committees representing the general interests of the capitalist class, it was useless to hope that they would give any “better wages and conditions than individual capitalists. And judging by the recent agitation among “public sector ” employees, it seems that not only are those employed by the State and its agencies no better treated than similar workers in private employ—they are actually falling behind in wages and conditions.

But no doubt the nationalizers will still be trotting out their “better wages” arguments for years to come.

Strike in Saskatchewan

When we say that all workers by hand or brain have fundamentally the same interests, we are told that white-collar and professional workers are somehow quite different from manual workers— for example, doctors and the rest would never strike. This theory was never in accord with the facts—doctors and nurses have gone on strike more than once in Continental countries in recent years, and they threatened to strike, and nearly did strike, in this country on the introduction of the National Health Service. Now, of course, the theory has been swept away finally by the events in Saskatchewan. There the great majority of doctors have gone on strike against the Government’s attempt to introduce a medical service having some points in common with the British system. What matters here is not whether one sympathizes with this particular strike (we emphatically do not), but the simple fact that the strike has happened and has continued several weeks. Doctors, in fact, are workers just like the rest of us. In their struggles over conditions of employment they can and do use such working-class weapons as strike action even, as in this case, for the wrong reasons.

Cruel and violent

As a judge recently sentenced a man of twenty to five years’ imprisonment, and other youths to shorter terms, for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, he is reported to have said: “The iron bars and bottles and other weapons with which some of you were armed show how cruel and violent human beings can become.”

Well, well. There is news for the judge.

Human beings can become even more cruel and violent than that.

An iron bar can kill a man. A high-explosive bomb can kill a thousand. An atom bomb can kill a hundred thousand. And the latest H-bombs, we are told, can kill several millions.

But for these large-scale killings, no one is put in the dock. Violence is only deplored when it is not in the interests of the ruling class.

Yet if five years’ jail is the fit sentence for injuring one or two other men, what sentence can the workers pass on the capitalist system?

The only possible sentence is total abolition.

Top people

A new book Anatomy of Britain, by Anthony Sampson, gives several indications of the wealth of Britain’s upper class. On the distribution of wealth, he says :

“One recent survey has thrown light on capital wealth. Lydall and Tipping, writing in the Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics in 1961, estimated that the top one per cent of British adults owned 43 per cent of total net capital—whereas in America (in 1954) the top one per cent owned only 24 per cent of personal wealth. The authors estimated that 20,000 people owned more than £100,000, and that their average holding was £250,000. (While at the bottom there are 16 million people with less than £100 each, and an average of £50.)”

Mr. Sampson quotes the Ministry of Labour, I960, figures that 30,000 men and 275,000 women are in private domestic service, among whom (according to one domestic agency) there are 600 butlers. He goes on to quote an estimate of “the cost of service in a well-appointed household”:

Butler:                                       £500

Two footman at £350:               £700

Odd man:                                  £250

Head housemaid:                      £300

Two housemaids at £250:         £500

Cook:                                        £400

Kitchenmaid:                            £250

Lady’s maid:                             £300

Chauffeur (non-resident):         £650

Three daily helps at £150:        £450 

Total:                                      £4,300

Keep (residents only):           £2,000

Total:                                      £6,300

If only someone would mention these figures to the Labour Party leaders, they might stop talking about the “social revolution” they are supposed to have put through after the war.

Alwyn Edgar

Pot Pourri. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

I did not go to the Business Exhibition, but I have done the next best thing — read the newspaper puffs of it. One needs not to be a master of deductive philosophy to read the lesson writ large over the pages of booming devoted to it. The features of this year consist of calculating machines for eliminating clerks ; a machine (the Dictaphone) for doubling one’s output ; another that addresses envelopes at the rate of 2,000 an hour, and so on. Competitions for speed and accuracy are again a leading item, marked this year by the large number of women who have entered for the first time. One firm will teach you (for a consideration) how to develope your powers, how to manage men, increase efficiency and such like.

* * *

The Dictaphone is best described in the maker’s advertisements : “enabling one person to do the work of two, saving 50% time and labour in any office. The work of the principal is simplified, the output of the typist doubled.” Wages, we understand, will remain stationary. When the envelope addresser and the Dictaphone get thoroughly going, throwing half the clerical workers on the streets, making the unfortunate remainder work doubly hard, I suppose the Tariff Reformer will still have no difficulty in proving to them that a tax on Dutch cheese and a preferential tariff in favour of Colonial sardines will solve the problem. The Free Trader, doubtless, will glibly assure the beaten competitors of the Dictaphone and the mechanical calculator that as soon as the Budget has had a chance, and when the 99 year leases fall in, and when the great schemes that the Liberal party has up its sleeve (at present only darkly hinted at) get in full swing, “then !” he’ll say, “then !—” Ah ‘then !

To the clerk, as to every other labourer for hire, it should be clear that the good things of life are not for him whilst the present system of “managing men” is the vogue. If you believe in a step at a time (most of them backwards), join the Liberal party, or its adjuncts, the I.L.P. or S.D.P., and work for State Christmas Trees for your great-grandchildren and municipal ice-cream barrows. If you want freedom now, not in 99 years, join the S.P.G.B.

* * *

I would like to say just here that we Socialists don’t ask for any license, poetical, political, or of any other variety. When we say the I.L.P., Labour Party, S.D.P., Fabian Society, etc. are capitalist agencies, please don’t assume that pique or arrogance actuate us. Just to show you what is meant, here is an instance.

* * *

The Railway Clerks’ Association has recently affiliated to the Labour Party. The latter, of course, accepted it on the usual terms. The character of the.R.C.A. is succinctly outlined in. the October No. of their official organ, p. 202 : “The policy of the R.C.A. is not only to secure justice for its members, but also to urge and assist them to make themselves worth more to their employer.” Of such is the kingdom of Henderson & Co.

* * *

Whilst we are on the subject I may have a jab at the Fabians. Now look at this !

“I came to the conclusion that just as it is in the interests of Capital to keep the rolling stock and the permanent way in good repair, so it must be to the interest of Capital to be constantly raising the standard of living for the men in order that the human factor may be improved.”

Who said that? None other than Mrs, Sidney Webb, at the opening of the new A.S.R.S. offices. That’s the sort of fool’s errand the Fabians are on. Don’t join them.

* * *

A few lines from a poem by Mr. James Stephens are worth repeating.

"For I’ve sat my life away with pen and rule,

        On a stool,

Totting little lines of figures, and so will

        Tho’ the chill

And the langour of gray hairs on my brow

        Mock me now.

And sometimes while I work I lift my eyes

        To the skies,

To the foot or two of heaven which I trace

        In the space

That a grimy window grudges to the spot

         Where I tot.

And I ask the God who made me and the sun

          What I’ve done

To be buried in this dark and dreary cave

           Like a grave,

While the world laughs in scorn now and then

          At my pen."

You see, that’s just where he is silly, asking God anything. You can sit on a stool asking conundrums of space and gather nothing but a harvest of wasted years and a heap of worn-out trousers. It may be easy, but it is quite profitless. Get off your stool and get to work on your slave-irons. Gazing through a couple of feet of smoky window-glass wont help you any. If you have any spare brain your employer has not a lien on, we’ll tell you what to do with it. Come in.

Wilfred.

50 Years Ago: Who are the working class? (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Within the ranks of the working class itself there are many who suffer from the illusion that they are in a class apart from and above the common worker; in fact that their interests are identical with those of the masters as against the rest of the workers. Amongst these are scientists, managers and salaried workers of various kinds.

These types of workers would be under no delusion if they would apply to their condition the test of a slave. On what do they depend for their living? Are they dependent wholly or mainly on selling their energies for wages or salaries in order to live? If this fits their economic condition then they are members of the working class, slaves, always in fear of losing their jobs and suffering accordingly.

The point always to be borne in mind is the frailty of the hold upon that on which the living depends, and the ease and swiftness of operation of the power of the job-controllers. Many in exalted positions have had this very cruelly impressed upon them, and although they scorn the suggestion that they are enslaved, yet they take good care to placate and dance to the tune of those responsible for the salaries.

There is no escape, therefore, from the conclusion that the fundamental interest of all who depend upon wages or salaries is identical, and is opposed to the interest of those who own the means of production and pay their slaves wages or salaries. It is a slave interest opposed to an ownership interest.

[From an article, "Are You a Slave?" by G. McClatchie, published in Socialist Standard, December 1934.]

At Random. (1908)

From the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Mr. Burrows ought to be in Parliament; he is much the sanest of the Party to which he belongs.” (W. T. Stead, Review of Reviews, August, 1908.

* * *

After this handsome certificate of comparative “sanity” from one of the most notorious tin gods of Nonconformist-Liberalism, the suave gentleman who plays “Socialism” on a cracked pipe in an impossible key to the tune of “Reform,” should experience no trouble in making one of those “compacts” with the master-class which the Social Democratic Party would never endorse.

* * *

What, never ? Well; hardly ever ! See Manifesto of the S.P.G.B., pp. 1, 9, and 10.

* * *

The “humanity” of individual members of the governing class often throws a lurid light on the all-essential conception of class-consciousness. We learn from the Correspondent of the Daily News that “President, Faillères and M. Clemenceau have stubborn objections to capital punishment.”

* * *

Whether a criminal shall take his last look through the “little window,” or be immured in prison, has little, or very remote, bearing on the interests of the gentlemen in question as members of the governing class. Quite otherwise with a strike. The sabred right of the capitalist to exercise his unfettered “freedom” in brutal exploitation is challenged. The genial Fallières and the clement Clemenceau have no hesitation then in shooting.

* * *

“Stubborn objections to capital punishment” en masse, in the interests of the employers, have as little existence with Fallières and Clemenceau. as with Asquith and Burns.

* * *

When will the worker fully grasp the fatal significance of the armed forces of the nation to himself ? “Hard times” are in store during the coming winter. Sharp reminders of the real moaning of such forces may serve to help even fatuous fools of the Blatchford type to see that preservation of “our” country is the function of the army and navy only on the clear recognition of the fact that “our” is synonymous with the class that hold and control the instruments of production.

* * *

The worker is fatherland-less. Stripped of all claim to any advantages which he may have formerly enjoyed from the use of land, the appeal to save “our” country from foreign conquest by the Editor of the Clarion, is on a par with his strenuous begging for funds to finance “our” Vans—which belong, as you please are solely controlled by—spite the feeble Clarionese kickers—the Editor of the Clarion

* * *

As thus : “MY method is soon told. I look out for good men. When I find one, I give thanks. I put him into the right place. I give him a free hand.”

“Alderman E. R. Hartley will be appointed Van Organiser.—Clarion (recent issue).

* * *

Inimitable style, Nunquam’s ! ! My very dear friends of the Clarion brand of “Reform,” DO YOU READ “YOUR” ORGAN?

* * *

Listen to the tale of woe ! The Class Teacher this time. “Pious professional protests, pious professional tears have all been in vain. In some cases we (the teachers’ unions) are actually progressing backwards.”

“One gets sick unto death of it all: we are singing and making merry while the ship is sinking.”

* * *

The “dearth” of teachers has come to a most brutal, beastly, unseemly end. The poor pedagogue is actually being brought face to face with “iron laws of supply and demand.” But—soft ! We will take heed unto ourselves, we will take counsel of the miner, we will learn wisdom from the bricklayer, and the gasworker. We “will reduce the number of possible blacklegs.”

* * *

Why, damme ! if it comes to that, “we will adopt strike principles.”

* * *

Ay ! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the Counter-Jumpers’ Champion, noise it not abroad in the Dustmen’s Herald—we will bow our heads, and admit “uncertificated teachers” to the Union what time we declare that “with the ‘supplementary ‘ teachers we have no cause in common.”

* * *

“No cause in common.” Fools and blind ! Compelled to sell your pitiful commodity, a shoddy education, at a rate which compels you too oft to occupy your “leisure” time in petty trading, in divers pursuits which a false pride and an eye to income tax compels you to hide, you have yet to learn that you have a “cause in common” with your class, the working class.

* * *

Meanwhile, the President of your Union is discovering that there is a “great sense of unity” among teachers in the wonderful German Empire.

* * *

A comrade from Manchester, who modestly hides his individuality under the weird title of “Jaybee,” writes: —

“The futility of endeavouring to put a stop to industrial operations by such a method as the general strike, was shown during the recent strike in Paris ; Mr. Clemenceau, the Premier, said he would be able to place at the disposal of the directors, military engineers to take the place of the men in supply stations if they went on strike.”

* * *

“Further, he was prepared to supply TROOPS TO GUARD THE MAINS.”

* * *

A striking commentary on the soundness of the position taken up by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, viz: that, whilst fully recognising the necessity of organisation on the industrial plane, the seizure of the political machinery (including the armed forces of the nation) by the worker, is absolutely essential to working-class emancipation.

* * *

“Direct action,” however thickly veiled with high-seeming Socialist phrases, is Anarchy, and he who would persuade the worker to “drive out Beelzebub with Beelzebub” is working present woe, and hindering future weal in a way that is the more tragic, in so far as a genuine desire to serve his class often dominates the misguided devotee to an ancient and obsolete faith.

A. Reginald

Letter: I’ve Been Misinformed (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I read with interest Steve Coleman's article "Farewell to the Middle Class" in the September issue as 1 used to work for IBM as a contractor some years ago. It was pitiful to see how brainwashed its employees were; so much in fact they all believed that the corporation would keep them all employed for life. I remember colleagues almost boastfully stating that union membership was totally unnecessary when employed by such a kind and caring company as IBM.

Now that thousands of its workforce worldwide have been, or still are, facing redundancy, I’ve no doubt that those same, smug people can now be seen with egg slowly dribbling down their faces. This corporation is a past-master at hiding its tyranny behind a smile.

While insecurity and uncertainty dog its workforce (and I’ve no doubt the plight of those sorry characters in Steve's article w'ill be repeated many times over), it is interesting to note that earlier this year, the IBM corporation employed a new chairman. Lou Gerstner Jr., previously of Nabisco has been engaged on a salary of S2 million plus annual performance-related incentives of of $1.5 million. Included in this neat little package was also the offer of 500.000 IBM shares and a further, long-term inducement of $500,000. Oh! I almost forgot. As a "sweetener" for leaving Nabisco, he also received a further $5,000,000 to cover any of the profits he may have lost by leaving Nabisco.

Sounds incredible, eh. Not least of all to the employees I don’t wonder. Perhaps it would be more fitting if IBM stood for I’ve Been Misinformed.

Simon Montfalcon,

Romsey, Hampshire

The Only Way for Clerks. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Word to the National Union.

.

Mr. Herbert H. Elvin is a hard-shelled Baptist—or so it would seem from his biographical notes, which appear (with portrait) in the March issue of The Clerk. He is also the General Secretary of the National Union of Clerks. In the capacity of Baptist he is after souls, and is still, we learn, “in great demand as a local preacher.” As the secretary of the N.U.C. he is concerned with the salvation of bodies. In both departments his methods are the same. He builds temples to Ignorance and invites the unregenerate to come in and worship in order that they may be saved. His success as a Baptist church-builder may be unquestionable—I neither know nor care. But we of the S.P.G.B. are concerned with the measure of his success in the politico-economic sphere—meaning by success in this connection, the extent to which he may be able to induce clerical workers to regard his economic and political temple as a sanctuary from the deep damnation of their servitude.

Clerks have generally been regarded, not without reason, as amongst

THE MOST DESPERATE OF ALL THE DULLARDS

of the working class. The pathetic intensity of their passion for respectability, and the affectation of aloofness from the “corduroy brigade” which, as members of a “profession,” they have, in the past particularly, displayed, have made their organisation a distinctly difficult task. Not even such an eminently respectable society as the N.U.C. seems to be, could have inspired in them any other than a feeling of lofty disdain had it not been that the operations of a highly organised capitalist system, ruthless in its working, and certainly entirely regardless of any suppositious differences between owners of stovepipe hats and smokers of the black cutty, have crushed the clerk into some sort of recognition of the fact that, in common with all other working-class members, he is no more than a commodity in the labour market—and a very redundant commodity at that. Having, however, reached the point where he is beginning to see that his interests are, after all, bound up with those of the horny-handed sons of labour, it is of all things undesirable that he should have his devolopment warped by being put upon a polltico-economic dietry which, while it may be good enough for the sustenance of crustacean Baptists, is absolutely starvation fare for a healthy member of the working class.

Of course, Mr. Elvin cannot help being merely silly in the position of advisor to the clerks,

HIS BIBLICAL EXEMPLARS

and his contemporary religious mentors are hardly likely to guide him in the path that is economically right; and when a young man has been brought up to regard these as the embodiment of all the virtues, it is not surprising if he gives off “views” that are only notable for their, shall we say, absurdity. I sympathise with him in his unhappy position, but I must, all the same, baste his precious views. This one, for an example—

“We should not allow our branches to become mere debating societies to discuss the good and the ill of Toryism, Liberalism, Socialism, or any other ism outside trade unionism. To effect any great reform in the condition of the clerk we must first of all weld all clerks into a powerful organisation, and, knowing what I do of the temperament of the clerk, I am fully satisfied that we shall never be able to accomplish this if members try to bring the Union under the control of some political party, rather than work disinterestedly for the benefit of clerks as a whole.”

Now I will defy Ramsay MacDonald, Robert Blatchford, Bruce Glasier, or any other accepted exponent of the art, to crowd more undiluted piffle into so small a compass. Toryism, Liberalism, and Socialism are taboo in the Union. The clerks are to regard Socialism as on a par with Toryism and Liberalism so far as the realisation of their “great reform” is concerned. It is of no consequence that Liberalism and Toryism are the political expressions of the interests of the master class against which the clerks are to organise themselves. It is of no account that these masters are in politics simply in order to maintain their economic supremacy and the continued enslavement of the clerk. It does not matter that the Socialist Party stands in irreconcilable antagonism to the capitalist parties and is the only party through which the clerks and other workers may achieve any material improvement in their conditions. This is outside the purview of the trade-unionised clerk. He may come in, be he Tory or Liberal or nothing. He is to

KEEP MUM UPON EVERYTHING

except the increase of the strength of the trade union, the payment of his dues, and other matters appertaining to the union, until there is a sufficient body “organised” to warrant a move being made toward that “great reform” and then—well, we will make a move !

I wonder whether Mr. Elvin has any definite notion of what that move must be toward, and how the N.U.C. is to proceed. I understand he does not favour strikes. He is opposed to discussion that may have the effect of opening the eyes of the politically blind. Does he, then, hope to peacefully persuade the masters to concede the “great reform”—whatever that may be ? Surely even a Baptist is sufficiently awake to know the futility of that hope. How then ?

Mr. Elvin seems to see, rather mistily, that he is up against a dead wall. And he takes refuge in “pothry.” It’s an old dodge, and rather a favourite with those who are faced at the end of their argumentative tether with an irrepressible note of interrogation. Mr. Elvin’s refuge is Whittier, who exhorts the reader thus—

Perish party, perish clan,

Strike together while ye can.

and finishes

Let your hearts together be

  As the heart of one.

which is all doubtless very nice and inspiriting, but doesn’t get us much “forrarder,” seeing that we don’t know yet what we are to strike at, or how we are to strike. We cannot strike economically because strikes are taboo. We cannot hope to induce the masters to give us our “great reform.” Much more powerful organisations of much more highly skilled workers, e.g., the engineers, have failed dismally in that direction. And we cannot strike politically because, being at

POLITICAL SIXES AND SEVENS

(owing, in part, probably, to political discussion being barred in the Union) we cannot “strike together” as exhorted by the poet. On the whole it would seem easier to “Let our hearts together beat as the heart of one” !

But to do Mr. Elvin justice, he is not quite done yet. He seems to be, although he does not say so directly, in favour of the move toward the “great reform” being made if all else fails, through the medium of the Labour Party. After all the “no politics in the Union” ukase, this seems to be a little confusing. Therefore Mr. Elvin hastens to assure us that the Labour Party is not a political party “in the general usage of the term.” It is only a party taking political action. If that also is not clear perhaps this will be. “It” (the Labour Party) “is a conglomeration of the political parties. It is a union of those who are divided on questions like Home Rule, Education (sectarian or secular), Disestablishment of the Church; but are of one mind on matters affecting the interests of the workers.”

Accept this for the fact it is not. Apparently Mr. Elvin believes that political parties “in the general usage of the term,” are only concerned with questions like Home Rule, Disestablishment, etc. He doesn’t seem to have an inkling of the truth that just as (according to him) the Labour Party is of one mind on matters affecting the interests of the workers, so the other parties are of one mind on matters affecting the interests of the capitalists. If the Labour Party was of one mind on questions of real working-class interest, if it was a political party “in the general usage of the term,” it would not be the conglomeration of pettifogging palliative-mongers purveying preposterous pills for economic earthquakes that it is. It is as hopeless as the poet, as futile as Mr. Elvin’s creed. It cannot effect any material improvement in the position of the working class.

But even if it could, how is it possible to secure the adhesion of Liberal and Tory clerks in the N.U.C. to the Labour Party if discussion of party politics is not allowed ? To talk as Mr. Elvin talks about the difference between politics and party politics is simply more piffle. Political questions are broadly associated with political parties. Essential working-class politics are the politics of the party that is in irreconcilable opposition to the political parties of the capitalist class. That working-class party is not the Labour Party. It is the Socialist Party. Yet Mr. Elvin puts

SOCIALISM IN THE CART

with Liberalism and Toryism and hauls them all outside his precious Union.

All this “baffle-headedness” and positively paralysing stupidity may come of being a Baptist, or it may not. We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not concerned with the Baptist or greatly with Mr. Elvin. But when Mr. Elvin the Baptist, takes up the position of an instructor of the working class and pours out the vials of his drivel upon the heads of those of our class who have in their ignorance elected him to their chieftainship, we step in to show the folly of the position and the disastrous results that must accrue. If Mr. Elvin is honest (and we have no reason for the present for supposing him otherwise), let him reconsider himself and see if he cannot fit himself adequately for the post of working-class advisor—if that is what he desires to be. If, however, his union members prefer to follow his present lead ; if their action is not guided in the future by a clearer apprehension of the position they occupy as clerks in the working-class movement than their secretary seems to possess, they are in for some extremely painful experiences. But if they will take every opportunity of discussing the political situation in the light of the information the Socialist has; if they will study Socialism and let their actions be guided by Socialist science, they will go out to the fight—it will be a fight, sure enough—with no delusions about the capitulation of the opposing forces, with no misapprehensions on the score of the advantages to be derived from this or that big or little reform. They will know that there is no reform worth much more than a tinker’s anathema from the working-class point of view. They will know that the only thing worth organising for, striving for, if needs be, dying for, is the control of the means by which they live. Without this control they have no voice in the disposal of the product of labour. They are slaves without the security that the chattel slave possessed. Their position is always precarious, always one of unhappy struggle ; a position which is not, nor can be, altered in any single important aspect by any reform whatever. But given ownership and control of the means of living, and they have the guarantee of all the material things of life.

THE SLAVE HAS CEASED ;

the master of slaves has ceased. One hundred per cent. of the produce goes to the producer. The struggle for bread is done.

How may this control be secured ? Through organisation on class-conscious lines in the workshop and office and factory ; and in the political party (in the common usage of that term) that is out specifically to wrest political power from the representatives of the capitalist class in the legislature, in order that control of the machinery of production may be secured by the working class without danger of being blown to the Baptists’ devil by the armed forces, which are, of course, under the direction of the dominant power in Parliament.

The Socialist economic organisation has yet to be evolved. But the political party that answers all requirements, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, is here. The Socialist Party is the political party that the stupidity of Mr. Elvin places outside the union in company with the Liberal and Tory Parties, yet it is none the less the party the clerical workers must join sooner or later. Therefore it behoves them to treat as cavalierly as they think fit their secretarial exhortation, and discuss political action—party politics—to the top of their bent, particularly the politics of the Socialist Party.

If they require further information or literature a line to the office of the Party will bring it. Or if Mr. Elvin would like to defend his position or attack ours, we will give him all the rope he wants. And if the worst happens, his blood be on his own head !

Alegra.

Notes and Clippings. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fred. Jowett, M.P.,—who signalised his career as a public man by bargaining with the Liberals for the exchange of support—has been giving what the Clarion is pleased to call “a Lesson in Political Tactics.” The lesson does not consist, as one conversant with his actions would suppose, in an exposition of the gentle, if somewhat dirty, art of collecting “fly-paper” votes. On the contrary, the member for West Bradford lectures the Scotch representatives on their “docility,” pointing out that Irishmen have.obtained concessions by reason of their militant attitude.

* * *

And how does this Political Bottom comport himself when confronted by the assembly which he so valiantly belabours on paper? Call a witness—Lloyd George : “There were only five or six Socialists in the House of Commons. Though some of them might make wild speeches outside, in the House of Commons they were thoroughly tame. They were there, tinkering up bills, and doing odd jobs of that kind in the Liberal workshop.” Verily, the master class, relieved and amused at the nightingale “roaring” of the bogus lions, may well say “Let ’em roar again, let ’em roar again.”

* * *

A paid organiser of the Independent Labour Party, speaking in opposition to a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, on the 12th of April, in Finsbury Park, said that he had had it on the best authority that Ramsay MacDonald had been offered a post in the government by Asquith, and his manly bosom “visibly swelled” when he informed his hearers that the man whom Quelch says is out for the making of his own career, refused.

* * *

Query: Did the organiser expect him to accept ? Had he done so, what would have been the position of the Independent Labour Party ?

* * *

We pause for a reply—which we do not expect from officials or organisers of the I.L.P. An expression of opinion from any of the rank and file of that organisation would be warmly welcomed—and recorded—by the Socialist Standard. Personal contact with members of the I.L.P. has given more than one of us high hopes of the rank and file. Not a few who had been merely lacking in information as to the methods of their organisation, when enlightened by the mouth or pen of a genuine Socialist, have expressed deep dissatisfaction, which must lead to the inevitable discovery that false methods are the inevitable outcome of a false theory.

* * *

Anything short of the recognition that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself, will inevitably breed the particularly noxious species of parasite that lives upon its own kind, the sentimentalist whose attitude is an eternal compromise between broken-bottle-anarchy and we-are-all-brothers fatuousness, disappointment, disgust, and apathy.

* * *

The National Federation of Assistant Teachers—one of the six unions to which some fortunate pedagogues may belong!—is of opinion that “there is immediate necessity for an alteration in the salaries of assistant teachers.” But alack and alas! the organ of the N.F.A.T. has discovered that “the earnest devotee of the scholastic art is as much a victim of the iron law of supply and demand, as any luckless wight of a miner, joiner, or bricksetter ever was.”

* * *

The remedy proposed, of course, is the old, old Trade Union fake. Strive to create a corner in labour. Lesson the supply. In view of the fact that the “powerful” London Teachers’ Association, represented on the London County Council by the late rejected of Peckham has failed to perceptibly influence the Council with regard to its policy of flooding the market with “scholarship” lads and lasses, bearing in mind that the parents who are only just able to send their children to “secondary” schools, feeling the “economic pressure” which is steadily squeezing them down, down to ever lower levels, are eagerly availing themselves of the opportunity to “place” their children, is it likely that the mop of Unionism can stem the advancing flood ?

* * *

No hope, no light for the teacher until he recognises the fact that the “iron law” which binds him and the miner is but an expression of the fact that he and the miner, having nothing to sell but their labour-power, are wage-slaves, and that the united efforts of teacher and miner, joiner and bricksetter, are required to abolish wage-slavedom. This is only possible by an organisation which shall embrace the whole working class. In a word, the basis of the workers’ organisation must be class solidarity and class interests. Its tactics must be aggressive, and its aim revolutionary. Such an organisation (the S.P.G.B.) exists.

* * *

Mem. for “devotees of the scholastic art” :

Socialist Standard, June, ’06 : “The declared reason for the existence of the National Union of Teachers is the furtherance of the interests of the child. Is there not a danger that it may become the happy hunting-ground of the eloquent Party-man in a hurry to round his own life into a success?”

Daily Chronicle, April, ’08: “Everyone rejoices in the deserved promotion that has come to Dr. Macnamara, who has worked with unstinted devotion for the cause of Liberalism.”

* * *

Salary, £2,000.

* * *

Another mem. “N.F.A.T. Handbook,” p. 57 : “The following standard of salaries has been adopted by the National Federation of Assistant Teachers and the National Union of Teachers as a just and reasonable remuneration for Class Teachers:—

Metropolitan Men, Maximum, £220.

Women, Maximum,                  £165.”

* * *

Really, the humility of the average “class teacher,” if the above may be taken as a true reflection of his opinion, “passeth all understanding.” He deliberately rates his services at a tenth of that of his astute former colleague. How is this estimate arrived at ? Will some of the younger members of “the profession” enquire? Why are a woman’s services rated lower than those of a man ?

A. Reginald.

Civil Servants and Bonus Cuts. (1931)

From the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

During and after the recent Great War, Civil Servants found that the wages and salaries paid to them as employees of the State were not, owing to the general rise in prices, sufficient to maintain them and their families in the same comfort they had been accustomed to. After much agitation and negotiations with the authorities, an agreement was entered into in 1920, by which an addition was made to the prewar scales of pay according to the increased cost of living then existing. The bonus was to be increased or reduced as the cost of living should further rise or fall.

At the present time the cost of living is computed to be 52 per cent. over that of 1914.

Under the agreement the full bonus is only given on rates of par not greater than 35s. per week. Rates in excess of that sum carry a bonus which is reduced proportionately as pay advances above 35s., so that, in these cases, the actual addition to pre-war rates varies from 46 per cent. to 16 per cent. on the higher scales of pay.

Civil Servants in receipt of basic pay exceeding 35s. weekly, and consequently diminishing bonus, therefore claim, not unreasonably, that their standard of living has been considerably lowered.

Considerable notice has been given in the daily press to the question and to the efforts of Civil Servants and of W. J. Brown, Labour M.P. for West Wolverhampton, to bring pressure to bear on the Government to suspend the operation of the agreement in reducing pay at the present time, but without success. A saving of three million pounds per annum, in the wages of Civil Servants is indicated.

Civil Servants have been pleased by the quite unusual notice of the press given to their demands, which had not hitherto been so prominently brought before the public. It is probable that this is not so much due to sympathy with the efforts put forth, as to the impression desired to be made on other sections of the workers whose pay is at present the object of attack by the master class, such as school teachers, bank employees, and others.

The facts of the situation should be closely considered by Civil Servants. On the whole, as is also the case with school teachers and similar employees, they are reluctant to identify themselves with the working class, regarding; themselves as superior and holding themselves aloof as forming part of a middle class. The fiction of a middle class is encouraged by the capitalist class in order that this aloofness may keep them politically separate from the working class. The very fact that the current discontent in their ranks is based upon the inadequate remuneration given to them in return for the work performed, is plain proof that they are dependent upon their earnings for their maintenance. This condition of society is essentially one that puts its seal upon the working class who, having no means of living of their own, must sell their labour power to an employer in order to obtain the means of living, the employer in this instance being the State.

The remuneration they receive is based upon the necessary cost of their maintenance as Civil Servants and the rearing of a family in like circumstances. Under the present capitalist system of society there is always a tendency to depress their standard of living to a minimum. This it is from which they are now suffering. As in outside working class ranks they have been compelled to form their unions in order to maintain and forward their interests, as opposed to the attempts of their employer, the State, to lower their status and standard of living.

What is here pointed out should help Civil Servants to realise their position in Society, and also that, in order to reap the full benefit of their labour, they should unite with ail other sections of the working-class to overthrow the capitalism system and to establish the Socialist Commonwealth.

F. J. H.