James Connolly and the Easter Rising (2016)

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back Blog

This is the text of a talk given by Adam Buick, one of the speakers at the Wakefield Socialist History Society forum on James Connolly and the Easter Rising

I want to develop the case put by Sean O’Casey in 1919 in his The Story of the Irish Citizen Army that, in participating in the 1916 insurrection, Connolly was not acting as a socialist.

O’Casey wrote that “Connolly had stepped from the narrow by-way of Irish Socialism on to the crowded highway of Irish Nationalism”. He gave “fixing on the frontage of Liberty Hall a scroll on which was written ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland’” as an example of Connolly’s “determined attachment to the principles enunciated by Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers, which were. in many instances, directly contrary to his life-long teaching of Socialism”. As a result, O’Casey went on, “Liberty Hall was no longer the Headquarters of Irish Labour, but the centre of Irish disaffection”.

The Easter Rising, so-called, was an insurrection planned and led by the Irish Republican Brotherhood whose aim was to establish a Republic in Ireland along the lines of those in France and the United States. In other words, an independent Irish capitalist state.

Connolly had always stood for Ireland becoming a separate country. But in this, he was only adhering to the general viewpoint of the Second International that workers had a country and should strive to establish socialism  in it. In so far as they didn't think “socialism in one country” to be possible they envisaged a federation of independent socialist countries. Connolly was insisting that Ireland should be one of these countries. This view led to their downfall in 1914 when most of them rallied to the defence of their “country” in the First World War. It could also be said to have been Connolly’s too as it led to him also rallying to a capitalist state, albeit a would-be one.

Connolly had been a part of the revolutionary socialist scene for a period. In Scotland, where he was born, he had been a member of the Social Democratic Federation, the organisation that first introduced Marxist ideas into Britain, and then of its equivalent in Ireland, the Irish Socialist Republican Party. He participated in the “impossiblist revolt” in the SDF against the authoritarianism and opportunism of its founder Hyndman, which led to the formation of the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain in 1903 and of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Connolly was, in fact, the first chairman of the SLP, but soon afterwards left for America where he joined the Socialist Labor Party of America. Other members of the ISRP who left Ireland joined the SPGB.

The SLP of America was a party which, under Daniel De Leon, combined Second International Marxism and Syndicalism. Syndicalism is the doctrine that the best way, both to get improvements under capitalism and to overthrow the whole system, is through industrial action, culminating in the working class seizing control of the means of production. “Taking and holding” them was the phrase used. Unlike the French revolutionary syndicalists who rejected electoral action, De Leon and the SLP held that the “taking and holding” of the means of production would have to be backed by political action to win control of the state via the ballot box. The SLP called its view “socialist industrial unionism”.

The SLP participated in the formation of the IWW in 1905 but in 1908 the IWW adopted an anti-political stance, i.e. a pure syndicalist position, and De Leon and the SLP were expelled. Connolly, who by this time had fallen out with De Leon, remained and left the SLP.  In 1909 he published a pamphlet Socialism Made Easy setting out his views. The first part was made up of short “workshop talks” he had written some years previously; the second of longer articles explaining his “industrial unionism” which showed that, despite what the IWW had decided in 1908, he still adhered to the same basic position as De Leon: industrial action to overthrow capitalism backed up by political action at the ballot box. Writing in capitals he emphasised:

“IT IS, THEREFORE, ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE FOR THE EFFICIENT TRAINING OF THE WORKING CLASS ALONG CORRECT LINES THAT ACTION AT THE BALLOT BOX SHOULD ACCOMPANY ACTION IN THE WORKSHOP.”

He went on:

“The workers will be industrially organised on the economic field, and until that organisation is perfected, whilst the resultant feeling of class consciousness is permeating the minds of the workers, the Socialist Political Party will carry on an independent campaign of education and attack upon the political field, and as a consequence will remain the sole representative of the Socialist idea in politics.”

Although I think he got it the wrong way round – I think that, while both are necessary, political action is more important than industrial action and he was clearly wrong in assuming that “industrial union consciousness” would automatically reflect itself on the political field as socialist consciousness – this pamphlet shows that Connolly had once been part of the revolutionary socialist scene.

After his return to Ireland in 1910, Connolly came to abandon this position about the need for a socialist party to carry on a campaign of education and attack on the political field and to be “the sole representative of the Socialist idea in politics”. In 1912 he supported the setting up of the Irish Labour Party, a non-socialist party modelled on the Labour Party in Britain, to be the political arm of the trade union movement in Ireland. His 1915 pamphlet The Re-conquest of Ireland envisages this happening through the spread of co-operatives and the gradual nationalisation of more and more industries. It also lists a number of social reforms which “Labour”, i.e the Labour Party, should campaign for. He still believed in “One Big Union” but more to defend workers within capitalism than to take and hold the means of production.

It is not his drift towards Labour reformism that’s the issue here. The mystery is how he came to play a leading role in a pure and simple Irish Republican uprising. He had of course always been a republican in a sense. After all, he was a founding member of the Irish Socialist Republican Party with its paper The Workers Republic (although the terms “Socialist Republic” and “Workers Republic” were also in use outside Ireland as an alternative name for socialism as a system of society). But, precisely, a “socialist” or “workers” republic, not a capitalist republic as in France or the United States.

One of the articles included in Socialism Made Easy was a reprint of an article from The Workers Republic of 1899 entitled “Let Us Free Ireland !” Here’s an extract:

“After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won’t touch socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won’t pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic. Now, isn’t that worth fighting for?And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life in despair, enter the poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the Irish army will escort you to the poorhouse door to the tune of St. Patrick's Day. Oh! It will be nice to live in those days!“With the Green Flag floating o’er us” and an ever-increasing army of unemployed workers walking about under the Green Flag, wishing they had something to eat. Same as now! Whoop it up for liberty!”

This is prophetic of what did happen after an Irish State was established in 1922. The only thing he didn’t get right was that the flag that floated over the unemployed was a tricolour and not a green one with a harp.

This was not aimed at the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster as they supported only Home Rule. It was, and can only be, a criticism of pure and simple Republicanism, of “patriots who won’t touch socialism” as Connolly called them. So why then did he later join them in a vain attempt to set up an Irish capitalist Republic?

People have speculated as to why Connolly departed even from his later commitment to Labourism to support a typical Fenian stunt. Psychological explanations have been offered such as disillusion with workers for supporting the war or with Irish workers joining the British Army. It’s even been suggested that he had come to share Patrick Pearse’s view that a blood sacrifice was needed to revive Irish Nationalism.

Certainly, the insurrection was suicidal. Its leaders must have known that it had no chance of success, not even with German aid. It had very little popular support and was challenging the might of the world’s most powerful capitalist states which, being at war, was going to be at its most ruthless. And it was.

I want to finish by quoting what the Socialist Standard, the SPGB’s paper, said at the time:

From the May 1916 issue:
“A grave armed revolt in Dublin against English rule is raging at the time of writing. It is a revolt doomed from the outset, both because of the futility of its narrow nationalist aims, and the utter hopelessness of such a revolt against the mighty organised force of the political State.”

From July 1916:

It is true that the Irish workers have a fearful struggle to live, like the rest of their class the world over. But an anti-social movement like theirs, with "Ireland for Irishmen" for its slogan, was doomed to failure from the start. We, the working men and women who form the Socialist Party of Great Britain, sympathise with our fellow workers in Ireland in their struggle against the hideously squalid conditions that prevail among them, but must record our hostility to any movement that is not based upon the class struggle.h

And, finally, from August 1916:

It is a false notion of the Sinn Feiners and Nationalists that the Irish workers must struggle for national independence before they can tackle the problem of poverty. But the working class everywhere is under one capitalist government or another. To split territories, set up new governments, or to re-establish old ones will not help them nor even simplify the problem. Their only hope lies in the speedy establishment of Socialism. They must join hands with the workers of the world, and make common cause against the ruling class. They must make ready use of the last war – the war of the classes, in which classes will be abolished and a real equality established on the basis of ‘common ownership and democratic control of all the means of life.’”

Adam Buick

Solidarity governs in Poland (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is happening in Poland?

What sort of policies are coming from the Solidarity-led government? What are the prospects for the workers? And can it really be possible that the "vanguard" party—the privileged elite—could have really given up their power and privilege, voluntarily?

Over the New Year steep price rises were announced and meat disappeared from the cities' markets. No police were to be seen in Warsaw: even during New Year's Eve festivities in the centre, where thousands of people, many very drunk, celebrated noisily. Some say the police, unpopular and demoralised, are afraid to be seen on the streets. Many have left the force, some setting up in business as private detectives and security guards. Their clients are mostly rich people: "despite appearances. there are more and more wealthy people in Poland" (Warsaw Voice, 31 December-7 January).

With the move towards a market economy and private enterprise there are pickings to be had for the rich, and for Western capitalists. Lech Walesa has been begging Western businesses to set up shop in Poland, and the Economist reminds its readers that, like Portugal. Poland pays very low wages. Why is this? After all, isn't Solidarity supposed to be a trade union, representing workers interests. and doesn't it control the government?

Experts Hi-Jack Solidarity

Almost from the start Solidarity was dominated by so-called "experts". At its birth in Gdansk, in August 1980. when the workers' representatives wanted to demand the abolition of censorship and free elections, a representative of KOR (a group of intellectuals sympathetic to the workers) was the only one to plead for them to be reasonable. That man is now Prime Minister Mazowiecki.

As a result of the advice of such people, the Gdansk Agreement and later policy documents of Solidarity were mealy-mouthed, meekly accepting the status quo. avoiding any challenge to the “leading role of the Party”:

These new unions . . . will be established on the basis of . . . the socialist system which exists in Poland today. They will recognise the leading role of the PUWP in the state and will not oppose the existing system of international alliances. (Gdansk Agreement)

The workers' delegates were furious at this acknowledgement of the Party's “leading role", which had not been discussed with them. "From that moment on. they wanted to throw all the experts out of the shipyard", wrote an eyewitness. Jadwiga Staniszkis.

The Gdansk Agreement also urged workers “to show greater work discipline in co-operation with the management of the factories and enterprises", and "to work towards the increase of output'. Later. in its Draft Statutes (31 August 1980), Solidarity's aims are defined as to attempt to bring the workers' interests into harmony with the functioning of the enterprise".

This is the language of the Church, very influential with the leaders of the movement. Lech Walesa is on record as saying that he wouldn't trust himself to be a leader "if it were not for the influence of God" (BBC TV. 12 July 1981).

For the record, previous workers demands had been less humble and had insisted on free elections. Just before the Gdansk Agreement, at another shipyard occupation strike in Szczeczin. an agreement was reached which had nothing in it about the "leading role of the Party". But in Szczeczin no “experts" were allowed to hijack the workers' negotiations.

These "experts", like Mazowiecki, Michnik, Kuron and others of the KOR faction are now elected members of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, endorsed by Solidarity. However, last summers "free" and democratic elections were something of a fraud. Within a few weeks of the announcement of the election, Citizens' Committees (note: not workers' committees) sprang up and produced nominations: academics, writers, actors, film directors, names of all sorts, including KOR activists. Endorsed by Lech Walesa in the name of Solidarity—but without any process of consultation with the membership—these Solidarity candidates all got elected in the one-third of the seats open to them.

The election meant that the old PUWP. and its allies, held most of the seats but wherever there had been a choice, voters had shown their preference for Solidarity candidates. Jaruzelski chose to opt for a coalition, a form of power-sharing. Mazowiecki became Prime Minister and Kuron Minister of Labour while his side retained the key ministries of Defence, Internal Affairs, Transport and External Economic Relations. In short, the PUWP retained control over the armed forces and the police.

Consensus on Economic Reforms

The policies of the Mazowiecki government include the old classics of economic reform: ending food subsidies, increasing productivity, and introducing some form of “market economy". This is in line with the policy decided at the 1981 Solidarity Congress. and not very different from those which the PUWP were then advocating. As Marxism Today commented at the time. “Solidarity's reform proposals for economic decentralisation and the introduction of market mechanisms only diverge in degree from those of the Party and the government" (January 1982).

The continuity in policies is really quite striking. In July 1980. the then PUWP leader. Gierek, said that "rises in the standard of living have to be earned". The solution to Poland's economic crises, then and now, is to make the workers work harder and earn less.

Today, with inflation running at from 100 per cent to 500 per cent, workers' pay rises are not allowed to be above 80 per cent of the rise in the cost of living. So, even if they can obtain a rise, their earnings are cut by 20 per cent. If enterprises pay more, they are attacked with punitive taxation, even bankrupted. Kuron, as Minister of Labour, wants to limit the right to strike. His plan is for strike organisers to "be charged with paying the costs of strikes, a ban on political strikes and strikes concerning collective agreements that had previously been signed by the union"(Warsaw Voice). Incidentally, he appears on TV on Tuesday nights with helpful hints. Like his idea for solving the problem of poverty by opening an SOS bank account for people to send money to for distribution to the needy (a scheme which flopped due to objections from the Polish National Bank).

Under Solidarity rule, conditions for workers are not better than under Gierek in 1980, with shortages of basic essentials, high rates of accidents (in the mines, one death for every 500,000 tonnes of coal), the need to work weekends to supplement low wages, and so on.

Looking back, it seems that a consensus was reached in 1980-1 on plans for economic reform. These would include “marketisation", profit maximisation, ending the nomenklatura system, and some form of "workers' self-management". Already in 1980. Jerzy Urban of the PUWP wrote of the need to do a deal with the trade unions: “to find a place for the new trade unions in the whole system of government in Poland" (Polityka, November 1980).

Jaruzelski's strategy was to incorporate Solidarity as a partner in a coalition government. A similar policy was urged by the Church, always favouring national unity and “harmony". The result is that the PUWP does not have to carry the can for the unpleasant, harsh effects for workers of these “reforms". In fact the situation is one of role reversal. Once the workers' movement, Solidarity is now attacking workers’ living standards, forcing real wages down, and limiting their right to strike. And the PUWP and the old “official" unions are in opposition, protesting against price rises and objecting to Kuron's plans to limit the right to strike.

Enfranchisement of the Nomenklatura

So far the working class have not benefited from government policies. Who is benefiting? Quite a few members of the old elite, the nomenklatura of apparatchiks and managers, are busy feathering their own nests, setting up companies and acquiring business assets. Perfectly legal but decidedly unscrupulous activities are going on, according to the Warsaw Voice (31 December-7 January) in an article headed Watch Out, Thieves!’:

A new process called the "enfranchisement of the nomenklatura" began deep within the Polish economy. Beneficiaries of the previous system used their positions to secure their own financial futures by setting up companies which claimed state properly.

This began with buying up cars and property belonging to state offices and enterprises but "the extent of this destructive procedure is wider than had been believed".

Soon, when a scheme has been worked out for privatising industry, who do you think will have money to spare to buy shares and become legal capitalists? Not the working class, obviously. Effectively the "vanguard’' will re-establish its control of the means of production in a different form, no longer mediated through state ownership.

The Church will preach to the workers about the need for harmony. And Solidarity's activists will urge that their members be "responsible in their demands . . .  We as activists will ask our people here to understand and support the government of Mazowiecki", in the words of Edward Folcik, the Solidarity shop steward at a Wroclaw factory.

On a visit to Poland over the New Year I heard much that reminded me of the period, in the 1970s, when a Labour government arranged a deal with the TUC, a "social contract". This was not in the interests of the workers: in a period of inflation they were told that they could not demand pay rises; that this would not be in the national interest, and could mean the Tories getting back into power.

Similar arguments are used in Poland. Sacrifices must be made to get the economy on its feet again, “there is no other way", the only alternative would be to bring back the PUWP. And trade unions and clergy actively preach at the unfortunate workers about the need to work harder, for a “better tomorrow".

Charmian Skelton

Nationalism and economic collapse (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is still the conventional wisdom for members of the peace movement to equate the end of the military blocs partitioning Europe with a new era of peace. Individual nations, it is said, freed from the super-powers' endless games of brinkmanship and mad arms-racing will establish a new era of peaceful co-operation.

This ignores the fact that the Cold War of the last forty or so years simply froze into place the nationalist rivalries between states which had torn Europe apart in two world wars. Now the blocs are crumbling these dangerous rivalries are thrusting themselves once more on to the centre stage.

Poland and Germany

Poland had its western boundaries arbitrarily redrawn along the Oder-Neisse river lines, including the former German city of Danzig, now Gdansk. Fully one-third of Poland is former German territory, and the substantial German minority is now beginning to make itself known again.

When Chancellor Kohl paid an official visit to Poland early in November, he was forced to cancel plans to attend a German-language mass in the country after a furious outburst by the Polish media. The venue was to have been Annaberg in Silesia, which just happened to be the site of the brutal repression by the rightwing Freikorps of a Polish uprising against German rule in 1921. It is now a rallying point for the German-speaking minority in Silesia. Germany has still not renounced its claims to the “lost territories" and has never signed a peace treaty with Poland or Russia recognising the validity of the Oder-Neisse line.

Meanwhile the pent-up frustration of East Germans over economic conditions their side of the border is spilling over into calls for German reunification, while a recent East German law forbids Poles from buying subsidised goods in East German shops. A member of the East German parliament was loudly booed when he warned East Germans to "beware of putting an invisible yellow mark on the backs of our Polish friends"—a reference to the marking of the Jews under Nazism.

The Poles have looked at these developments with increasing nervousness. Polish officials recently met with Gorbachev and displayed a sudden keenness for stressing that Russia remain the most important external guarantee of the security of the Polish state.

Polish fears were put by Russian foreign minister Shevardnadze to the European Parliament in December. Questions remained about the German commitment to its present borders, he said, “will a reunified Germany be ready to accept the existing borders in Europe and renounce any territorial claim? The Federal Republic of Germany has avoided answering that".

On 3 December the Prussian Iron Cross and Eagle were returned to the Goddess of Victory statue atop of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin for the first time since 1958. In that year they were pulled down as being a “symbol of Prussian-German militarism”.

Hungary and Rumania

To the south of Poland, historic rivalries between the rulers of Rumania and Hungary were also frozen by the Cold War. Two and a half million Hungarian-speakers were locked into the western Rumanian province of Transylvania, where ever more desperate attempts were made by Ceausescu forcibly to integrate them, culminating in the notorious plan for forced resettlement into "model" towns after the razing of the Hungarian-Rumanian villages.

After the fall of Ceausescu there are already signs that the leaders of the ruling National Salvation Front share his views on integration. Istvan Pap. a Transylvanian Hungarian who fled Rumania three years ago. calls the leaders of the Front "little Ceausescus", while the father of the dissident priest Pastor Laszlo Tokes. whose persecution sparked the anti-Ceausescu uprising, warned recently: "After all that has happened the old way of thinking will go on. The people are demonstrating for democracy now. but I fear it may not last".

One particularly ominous sign is the creation of the National Christian Peasants Party, a religious and conservative oriented party with echoes of the crypto-fascist National Christian Party of the 1930s which had a pronounced anti-semitic programme and established its own para-military organisation.

The newly-formed Democratic Federation of Rumanian Hungarians is now pressing for laws on the rights of minorities to be debated by a democratically-elected government. But the fears of "liberal” Rumanians were summed up by the dissident Hungarian playwright and regional head of the Rumanian National Salvation Front. Andreas Suto: “If Ceausescus policy of romanisation of national minorities is not reversed it will be bad not only for Transylvania but also for the whole of East and Central Europe".

The Hungarian government also remains fiercely nationalistic towards the border issue. When Ceausescu's persecution of the Transylvanian Hungarians was at its height last year, it sent furious protests and broke off diplomatic relations, leading the Economist (2 September 1989) to speculate that “if this had been 1914 it would have been war" It should be remembered that it was precisely the pursuit of territorial claims against Rumania which led Hungary to disaster in the Second World War.

The fall of Ceausescu was precipitated by the Hungarian minority in Timisoara defending one of "their" priests against persecution. before being joined by Rumanian workers, and there is growing evidence that a new Hungarian government to be elected later this year will not let the border dispute rest. One of the leading contenders in the elections scheduled for April, the populist and patriotic “Democratic Forum", has already begun spouting anti- Rumanian. anti-semitic and anti-gypsy propaganda. At the end of December Dr Csba Vass. a founder member of the Forum, visited Transylvania, telling correspondents he hoped to "bring back on to the political agenda the question of the rights of the ethnic Hungarians there".

Instability and the rise of xenophobic nationalism also marks the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. In the middle of last year one third of a million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria fled the country after an attempt to forcibly assimilate them into the Bulgarian language and suppress their Islamic religion. Bulgaria's former dictator. Todor Zhikov. actively encouraged anti-Turkish sentiment to bolster his unpopular rule, forcing Turks to adopt Bulgarian names in 1984-5 for example. After his fall, the new government met mass opposition when it tried to restore the Turkish minority's rights.

"Neo-Monetarist Dictatorship"

No-one is suggesting that all this will lead to renewed hostilities in Eastern Europe—yet. The central point is that a severe economic crisis now threatens to engulf Eastern Europe, creating an explosive situation of social disintegration in which appeals to nationalism are often the last resort of a beleaguered ruling class.

The Hungarian parliament, for example, has just endorsed Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth’s austerity budget which aims to hasten the transition from a state capitalist to a free market capitalist economy. The package aims to cut the budget deficit by one-fifth from its current level of about £500m. The IMF has insisted on at least this before it will release $350m in standby credits and $1 billion in EC funds. The Finance Minister Laszlo Bekesi pulled no punches: “There is no alternative to our programme. What is at stake is the complete collapse of the economy"

In Poland the IMF-sponsored "rescue" package aims to slash inflation from 50 per cent a month to 5 per cent by April, while government subsidies on consumer goods will be cut from 31 to 14 per cent. All wages will be frozen. Unemployment is forecast to rise from virtually zero to 400,000 while the standard of living drops 20 per cent. Already about one million of the 37 million population are acknowledged to be not earning enough to live on, and officials say the figure is probably 10 times as many (Guardian, 18 December). According to the government, "social discipline" is already in disarray, and crime is on the increase: there are rumblings of union discontent and sporadic strikes. Recent reports cite Polish workers complaining that the "Proletarian (Party) Dictatorship" is simply being replaced by the "neo-monetarist dictatorship"

The situation looks as bad in Bulgaria. Although figures are hard to come by, estimates of the country's foreign debts are as high as $10 billion. The Rumanian government has a little more leeway owing to the former dictator's fanatical policy of debt repayment. but the underlying economy is in deep trouble.

So we have an explosive mixture of economic collapse and a resurgent nationalism. This feeds on historical divisions and the need of the new ruling classes in alliance with the remnants of the old to legitimise their rule through appeals to xenophobic and racist ideologies.

These ideologies gain their strength through the hard struggle for survival experienced by workers in everyday life under state capitalism, and these struggles are set to become even harsher under the lash of free market forces now being unleashed. East Europe, now manifested in newly assertive, separate states and pulled towards conflict by the capitalist economic development they serve, looks set to enter yet another grim cycle of violence and despair.

Andrew Thomas

The Welcome in the West (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perestroika (“restructuring") is really a term for the move away from the heavily-centralised state capitalist economic system of Eastern Europe (Russia has never remotely been either socialist or communist; Marx would turn in his grave at the thought of being associated with any of the inhumanities carried out there in his name) towards a more Western-style of capitalism.

No-one can begrudge people who have been oppressed, economically and psychologically, for so long actually getting reforms that improve their quality of life. It has been inspiring to see on TV the vast congregations of ordinary working class people thronging the centre of the major cities to make mass criticisms and demands that not so long ago would have got them run over by tanks or tortured by the local guardians of law and order and approved thinking.

In the longer term the switch from state capitalism to an economic system more like Western capitalism will be a very mixed blessing. Firstly, nothing will happen overnight. Over time, if the East European economies drag themselves nearer the capacities of those in the West, more wealth might be created But—and it’s a big but—the mass of working class people will only get a bigger share of wealth through the time-honoured principle that when the rich get richer, there are bigger crumbs falling from their tables for the poor to scrabble for.

So, who will be the rich under this system? Well, those who already have privilege and wealth stand at the head of the queue to benefit from the new opportunities that will come along. They are the ones who will be able to convert themselves to being private capitalist investors more easily than anyone else can. Perhaps some of the Party apparatchiks will need to do some agile mental gymnastics to justify their new position, but given the corruptions they administered in the name of the people and state one might imagine that their consciences will not stir a whit.

The position of the working class will not change substantially—they will remain the working class. In Poland, for example, where Solidarity now has political office if not power, this much-admired trade union has urged workers not to strike. The “restructuring" of the Polish economy will mean redundancies for workers The Polish working class is going to have to tighten its belts to help Poland become internationally competitive in the world capitalist marketplace and attract large investment from abroad as well as making the investments of its own new private capitalists profitable. Funny, isn't it, how under capitalism the least well-off have to suffer so that the already well-off can increase their wealth through profits?

What It’s Like in the West

What can the East European citizenry look forward to, then'? Since the end result of what is happening would seem to be something fairly similar to what exists in the West, examining the position of workers here will give some idea as to what East Europeans can expect.

Well, we have the vote and can vote for whichever representatives we wish, even if the choice is more than underwhelming as a rule. Political parties represent class interests and in Britain, the Socialist Party apart, no party represents the majority of ordinary people—the working class—at all.

The Conservative Party quite nakedly represents the interests of the ruling class, who wish to extend their wealth through unfettered profit-making. The Labour Party is grossly misnamed. It does not represented "labour", as can be readily gleaned from the policies adopted at its recent Party Conference It self-proclaims that it wishes to run capitalism better than the Tories, adding that it has the Leader and policies to do so.

Anyone who can remember life under a Labour government will surely recall that they, as Tory governments before, were continually at pains to limit or deny wage increases to “labour", wage demands made by workers who. faced with inflation and spiralling prices, only wished to maintain an already low standard of living.

The reason was simple. Capitalism runs governments, not the other way round. The stated goal of all parties aspiring to power is to run their country; which means running the economy in the interests of the profit-seeking capitalists. Profit is always put ahead of any concern, if it exists, for the material welfare of the working class. This is why the Labour Party, in "opposition", is loud and enthusiastic about wanting a socially caring society but. in power, has been as oppressive as any Tory government, readily adopting anti-working class policies as the needs of capitalism have demanded.

The fact that the interests of capitalists and those of workers are irreconcilable is easily revealed. Capitalists, who own the means of making wealth, continually seek to increase their profits. Profits drop if costs rise. Wage rises of any group of workers—who may only be showing a desire to stay solvent in the face of an economy that makes them poorer—are a rising cost to capitalists. Low or no wage increases mean larger profits for capitalists. That is the real equation in life.

If you have to work for somebody else for a wage or salary, no matter how much you earn, then you are a member of the working class. That applies to many who would vehemently call themselves middle class. However, class position is not a matter of imagined manners, or life-style, or amount of consumer items owned. It is the placing of the person economically, in relation to whether they own the means of wealth production but produce nothing (capitalists) or don't own them and by their labour together with that of their fellow workers produce the wealth of society.

We live in a two-tier society that mirrors this divide between the worker and the capitalist. In the area of education the "masses" attend state schools whereas the children of the wealthy attend “public" (another misnomer) schools. In the area of health, the NHS caters for the "masses" and private health-care facilities cater for the wealthy. Recently the director of ICI got a pay rise of £100,000. Many workers have to go on strike to get a paltry pay rise and could live until the end of their days (not extravagantly, but comfortably) on the annual interest such a sum could bring if it was invested wisely for them. That's the insanity and inequity of capitalism. The fat cats get fatter and workers struggle to survive while working to create profits for their exploiters.

Capitalism not a Free Society

Yet, almost from the cradle, we are fed the Myth of Democracy. We are continually told that the vote is our assurance of a free and democratic society. It does have that potential—if we vote to replace the gross inequity that is capitalism and choose instead a world that is typified by everyone's needs being met. But the millions of people, who live in poverty amidst plenty, know that choice and freedom under capitalism is determined by the amount of money you have. No money, no choice.

The well-off always expect the working class to tighten their belts at times of economic crisis. Yet it is the wealthy capitalists who could better afford to do this, but they won't. They must have their profit, which they will not tolerate becoming less. So they will lay off workers, cut production, and fight wage increases with a vengeance. All to cut costs and maximise their profit. They will be aided in this by the (any) government of the day. Democracy? Freedom? These are empty notions unless there is real equality for each citizen, including an equal right of access to the wealth of society.

In all essential respects Western capitalism and state capitalism are the same. Both have a minority, privileged class who have a monopoly of the wealth of their particular country and a majority working class who have to work for wages to live.

The Eastern Bloc currently seem to be moving towards a system of private capitalism (not necessarily exactly the same one as the West) allied with more democratic procedures for electing governments. That system has not freed the workers of the West. It is not going to free the workers of the East either. As the new governments try to put together streamlined, internationally competitive economies, the euphoric workers will soon discover that it will be their belts they will be urged to tighten as the ruthless reality of capitalism continues to prey on them.

The reforms they have achieved may ultimately come to be seen as icing on a rotten cake—very nice to look at but of crumbling fragility. On TV the sight of millions of East Germans flooding through the Berlin Wall was illuminating. Most looked round the shops, looking at expensive consumer goods they couldn't afford. The British press reported that the most popular purchase East Germans made in West Berlin was fresh fruit to take home. After the East Germans have some kind of elected assembly they are likely to find that they have voted for the availability of fresh fruit, not freedom

No matter how wonderful the reforms seem, in themselves they don't change the nature of capitalism. Profit and wealth remain in the hands of a ruling class and the working class, as ever, face an exploitation that deprives them of the wealth that they, and only they, have created.

There is, however, hope. Not just for workers in East Europe but for those throughout the world. That hope is socialism. Not the dreadful sham that passes for it in the current, so-called socialist countries but a world, to be achieved by a conscious majority of the working class voting for it, where everything is produced to meet need and not for the profit of a small privileged minority

Sandy Wilson

Letters to the Editors: Class, inflation (1990)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class, inflation

Dear Editors.

You talk a lot about the battle between the workers and the ruling classes. How do you group people in these classifications? Is a member of the ruling class someone who is connected with the government. or someone who earns more than a certain amount a year, or someone who has inherited substantial wealth, etc.? Are workers those who rely solely on their wages and benefits to survive? Into what class fall the self-employed, working for and/or by themselves? My parents have worked all their lives as dedicated teachers; they have bought small amounts of shares in government privatisations—what class are they?

Secondly, your article "Four fallacies about inflation" (Socialist Standard, August). You state that raising interest rates actually raises inflation, and that it is money supply that is responsible for inflation. In the latter point, you are to a great extent, correct; as to the former you seem to have missed the point of raising interest rates. This main aim is not to actually take money from people (although it does have this side effect)—a government wanting to do this would find it far more efficient to raise taxes—but to discourage people from creating new money: in other words, to stop new, further borrowing, and thus stopping them, as you argue, increasing the money supply and thus in turn the inflation rate. Interest rates are thus a valid means of controlling inflation over the medium-term, as has been demonstrated time and time again, the world over.

John Everett

Darlington

REPLY:

Class is defined by the position in which people stand with regard to the control of the use of the means of production. In present-day, capitalist society there are two main classes: those who monopolise the means of production whether through legal title (as in the West) or effective control through the state (as in Russia) and those who, excluded from such ownership and control, have to live by selling their mental and physical skills for a wage or salary: in short, the capitalist class and the working class. It is true that there also exist a comparatively small number of self-employed people who could be said to form a third class, but many of these are no better off than wage and salary workers in that they have to work hard and long to repay, with interest, the money they have borrowed.

The ruling class is the class that controls political power, today the capitalist class. Owning a few shares no more makes a wage and salary worker a capitalist than being paid for doing some work makes a capitalist a member of the working class.

You seem to have completely misread the article on inflation. We never stated that raising interest rates raises inflation; in fact we said the exact opposite: that inflation tends to cause interest rates to rise. We do indeed say that inflation is a question of the "money supply" but are always careful to define this precisely, as the supply of currency (notes and coins). Others, including yourself, wrongly include bank loans; which is absurd since it attributes to banks the power to create new purchasing power whereas all they can do is to redistribute existing purchasing power, from their depositors to their borrowers. Only the central state can create new purchasing power, in the form of more currency— which the Bank of England is doing all the time at a steady rate of around 5 per cent a year, even though the economy doesn't need it. Hence, the decline in the purchasing power of the pound which shows itself as a continual rise in the general price level.

Trying to control inflation through high interest rates is one of the most absurd "anti-inflationary" policies ever to have been devised since interest rates do not, and cannot, have any effect whatsoever on the general price level. We know of no evidence of it having worked anywhere, certainly not in Britain over the past few years.

Editors.

Dear Editors.

Alwyn Edgar's "Diary of A Capitalist” is obviously not compiled in a particularly methodical manner. His article in your January 1990 issue informed us that Churchill died in the “early 1950s", to be replaced as Prime Minister by Eden.

I fear that our capitalist's diary entry at that point must have been inspired by fantasies similar to those of the demonstrators he was so disparaging of. In fact, Churchill managed to survive another ten years after his resignation from Prime Ministerial office, dying as recently as 24 January 1965.

Nevertheless, I am in full agreement with Edgar's central point about the futility of socialists' concentrating their criticisms on the role of individual leaders in the running of capitalism.

Steve Cooke

York

An underestimate

Dear Editors,

I recently discovered your fine publication and was impressed by the refreshing clarity and concise nature of your articles. A figure given in the September issue confused me, though. A reference to Jon Bennett's Hunger Machine cited $21 million a year as being sufficient to nourish, house, educate, and provide health care for each individual on Earth. Certainly such a figure is way too high for each individual while being woefully inadequate for billions of people. Yet not even $21 billion a year would seem enough for the task. This would amount to about $21 a year per person assuming "only" one billion in need.

To demonstrate how puny a $21 million figure is in military matters consider this. World military expenses run over S2.5 billion a day! Of course only a fraction of this represents expenditures on actual hardware. In the US around half goes toward development and purchasing of weapons. The total US budget is about $300 billion for the military. This amounts to roughly 30 per cent of the world's total. At the same time we represent only 5 per cent of the population. Our beloved master class doesn't apparently believe in divine intervention to protect its material interests .

Frank Emerson

Minneapolis, 

USA.

REPLY:

We think that you and the others who have written to us on the same point are right and that the figure given in Jon Bennett's book (it is his figure, not ours) should have read $21 billion not $21 million.

The context in which Bennett uses the figure makes it clear that the resources represented by this sum are in addition to current spending on socially useful products and services. Although he does not quote a source for this figure, we think it probable that it is based on the work of Ruth Sivard who has for years produced various estimates of what could be done if the resources squandered on means of destruction were diverted to socially useful production to alleviate the suffering of the starving and the poorest of the poor. We are not in a position to seriously dispute her figures. As she was formerly chief of the economics division of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency her estimates must be regarded as having some authority.

What we would question is the probability of such a diversion of resources being made within the context of world capitalism with its overriding need to operate profitably and to defend vested interests. Where the motive for wealth production is the realisation of profit those without the means to buy suffer. Bennett highlights this in the context of food production when he writes:

Set against this harrowing catalogue of human misery is the startling fact that there is more than sufficient food currently available to feed every man, woman and child on the planet . . .  People die of hunger because they are poor, because they cannot afford to buy what food is available.

If this is so, then the establishment of socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the world's productive resources where production will be geared to meeting needs, could solve the "problem" of hunger virtually overnight. Whether the remaining problems would need the extra resources represented under capitalism in money terms as $21 billion or some other figure must be set against the fact that capitalism is a system of artificial scarcity.

Editors.

Sting In The Tail: Progress Backwards (1990)

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

Progress Backwards

Socialists are often told by opponents that capitalism is a wonderful social system. The market economy that they support is lauded as progressive and liberating.

It must come as a shock to these naive supporters of capitalism to read Poverty and the Environment : Reversing the Downward Spiral, a report published by the Washington-based Worldwide Institute using United Nations statistics. Although themselves supporters of capitalism's buying and selling system, their report is a terrible indictment of the system.

For the poor, particularly in Africa and Latin America, the Eighties have been an unmitigated disaster, a time of falling incomes and rising debts, of falling food supplies and rising death rates.

The report goes on to inform us that during the last decade more than 200 million more people have joined what they term "the absolute poor" - those who do not earn enough to meet the most basic biological needs for food, clothing and shelter.

These now number 1.2 billion, almost a quarter of humanity. The report forecasts that these recent trends threaten to increase the number of "absolutely poor" to 5 billion within the lifetime of today's children.

Needless to say the Worldwide Institute's "solution" Is a complex package of massive aid and all sorts of legal enactments to ease the problem. The socialist solution is much simpler. Abolish capitalism and introduce Socialism.


Spare a Tear

What torture it must be these days for all those lifelong supporters of "communist" Russia as everything they believed in crumbles before their eyes.

For decades they insisted that Russia was the world's freest democracy, a workers' paradise in which features of western capitalism like strikes and unemployment could never happen and where such evils as racism and nationalism had been eliminated.

Of course the truth in every instance was the very opposite of what these dupes believed and now they watch in horror as the Russian government pursues policies of privatisation, competitive tendering and the setting up of stock markets.

At the recent conference of Britain's Communist Party, delegates were told by one of their leaders that the events in eastern Europe spelled the end of the road for the world communist movement. Good riddance, we say: that movement has been a disaster for the world's workers and its place is in the dustbin of history!


Rogues & Vagabonds

It must be a comfort to us all to know that the police are protecting us from a bunch of "rogues and vagabonds".

According to a recently formed pressure group there were about 3,000 prosecutions in London last year of these miscreants. They were prosecuted under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. According to The Independent (5 December 1989):

The 165 year old law allows beggars and "every person wandering abroad, lodging in an un-occupied building or in the open air" to be prosecuted if he is unable to give a "good account of himself". It deems homeless people to be "rogues and vagabonds".

The pressure group of MPs and lawyers want this 1824 Act repealed. One of their spokesmen Matthias Kelly, a barrister, said "it is not the function of the law in a civilised society to criminalise the homeless".

But Mr. Kelly is not the humane crusader against prosecution of the poor that he seems. For later on in the report we learn:

If tramps were genuinely endangering the public, they should be charged with threatening behaviour, he said. There was no justification for retaining the "archaic" Act.

What a rogue! What a "civilised" society!


Capitalism's Lottery

The winning of political and trade union rights by workers in eastern Europe should be welcomed by workers everywhere.

But as western European capital flows east to take advantage of cheap labour in "the new Korea" then this will affect workers in western Europe.

For example, the jobs and working conditions of car workers in Britain, France, West Germany, Italy etc., will be threatened now that Fiat, one of Europe's industrial giants, is to produce cars in Russia for export to the already glutted markets of western Europe. Volkswagen is considering a similar move in East Germany.

And the TV programme, "1992 and All That" (Channel 4,2 December 1989), predicted that Spain and Portugal, which have been attracting investment from European big business because of their low-cost labour, are likely to lose out to eastern Europe.

So while workers will benefit from their newly-won rights, others may find their livelihoods vanish as capital continues its ceaseless search for bigger profits.


Soup Kitchen Culture

1990 is the year that sees Glasgow becoming "European City of Culture". The City Fathers have arranged a cultural feast for its citizens - Pavarotti singing opera, ballet and drama.

It is all part of the local capitalist class's efforts to project Glasgow as a worthwhile target for investment and a boost to the hotel and tourist trade. Glasgow aims to rid itself of the Red Clyde image, the razor slasher and Ranger and Celtic bar room brawls.

They have made great efforts to tidy up the buildings, floodlight well known landmarks and build a new concert hall. The local populace are proving more difficult to tidy up.

For instance The Observer Scotland reports (10 December 1989):

  Homeless users of a soup kitchen run by voluntary organisations in George Square, Glasgow, fear they may be moved from their established meeting place because they are an embarrassment to the city as it approaches the Year of Culture.
   A soup kitchen regular, known as Pat, said: "They are trying to brush us under the carpet because of the Culture Year. Culture doesn't care about us and we don't care about culture. If they are concerned about our safety they wouldn't chase us down to the Clydeside."
   A woman called Betty said:"Tell them to leave us alone. We need this soup kitchen."

Ironically the soup kitchen is located beside a statue of Robert Burns, the Scottish poet who wrote "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." True enough, Rabbie; and the Labour controlled council's hypocrisy should sadden even the most insensitive Labour Party supporter.

Scorpion.

Obituary: Helen Rose (1990)

Obituary from the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with deep regret that we have to announce the passing of Comrade Helen (Nellie) Rose. For over fifty years she had been a staunch and dedicated socialist. Her death was preceded by a long, painful illness so that her departure could only be considered a merciful release

Nellie's adherence to socialism was unwavering. She lived in South London and was a member of the old Lewisham branch and was active in many spheres of Party work including several years as a member of the Executive Committee.

Away from the Party Nellie was a practical person and a skilled dress-maker. She will be remembered as an example of steadfast adherence to, and dedicated work for the advancement of the cause of socialism.

Between the Lines: Soap Wars (1990)

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

SOAP WARS

While the more tedious minds were pointed towards a boat on the seas off Malta where the owl and the pussycat were carving up the future of Europe, your reviewer was waiting eagerly to see whether Rita Fairclough had really been done in down Coronation Street. In the end she had not been brutally murdered, but had simply lost her memory and gone to Blackpool—it is usually memory loss or dire poverty that leads workers to the place. Meanwhile on Britain's most watched TV programme, Neighbours (an Australian import designed to show that there are even worse things than Rupert Murdoch to be found in the outback), pantomime plots are recycled every few months on the assumption that the viewing audience suffers from collective memory loss.

Neighbours (BBC1. Monday to Friday, twice daily) and Coronation Street (ITV. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. 7.30pm) are both soap operas, but the difference between them is immense. Coronation Street is one of the best dramas on British TV. Its writers possess a grasp of dialogue and an ability to convey believable situations which is matched by the usually first-class performances of the actors. Pretentious bores may get all excited about the hidden meanings in Dennis Potter's allegedly intellectual allegory Blackeyes. but as far as this viewer was concerned Potter's offering was a load of boring, meaningless tripe. Coronation Street, on the contrary, is one of the better reasons to switch on the telly.

Soap operas are good for capitalism They keen the viewers attentive to a world which is not there. Workers watching events of a fictitious street are less likely to bother the established powers than workers who are thinking about the world outside their front doors. Soaps edit reality. Neighbours edits it to the point where life is depicted as a series of silly adventures, believable mainly by children and the childish. In the name of "good clean fun”, the programme makes sure never to expose its viewers to the insoluble miseries of poverty. Neighbours characters are involved in endless fights between good and evil; the latter always looks like it will win, just until the last moment when good prevails.

In Coronation Street there is a more genuine attempt to refer to the problems of working class life. But these are never presented as collective problems. They are not suffered by a class, but by individuals who must struggle along in their own little self-contained story-line. The main characters for showing such struggles against poverty used to be the Ogdens—now it is the Duckworths. Those families which cannot manage are depicted as rather dopey, lazy, unsophisticated and poorly-educated figures of fun. They are broke because they are daft.

Soaps do more to convey values to the working class of the late twentieth century than the Churches . They are morality plays. Alan Bradley, the man who was making life hell for Rita down the Street, finally got what he deserved. In East Enders the immoral Dirty Den was finally shot and dumped in the River Thames; rumours from the BBC are that the whole series might soon be dumped, and it won't be a day too soon. But soaps are here to stay; TV viewers love them. Granada TV, which makes Coronation Street, is currently working on a new twice-weekly soap called Families. A few lofty folk might be watching The Money Programme to see how the interest rates are doing, but most of us are fixed to our sets in eager anticipation of the moment when Deirdre Barlow catches Ken playing on the away ground with his mistress. They've got us where they want us.

SHOOTING MPs

My hopes were raised when I heard the commentator say they would be shooting Roy Hattersley talking about the Broadcasting Bill. Honecker under house arrest and Hattersley shot, all in one month, would be more excitement than one could stand. We have been encouraged to regard this newly-won right of being allowed to watch politicians, only from the waist upwards, as some kind of privilege. To be sure, it is better that we can see the swines at their business than being refused permission to watch. But permission has only been granted on their terms. Imagine if a trade union were to tell the BBC that its conference may be televised. but only on the basis of a long list of restrictions determined by the union so as to deny access to any images which would show it in its true light. There would be an outcry that militants are trying to censor the public's freedom. So, who gave MPs the power to determine what may and may not be witnessed of their proceedings?

In East Germany the workers have a rather different approach to these things. They do not wait to be invited into the sacred institutions of the state; they enter without permission. Did you see those pictures of German workers forcing open the doors of the secret police buildings? Here in "free" Britain it is the secret police who raid the TV studios. (Remember the Special Branch raid on BBC Scotland for daring to make a documentary about Britain's secret spy technology?). I wonder whether it would be the case that if thousands of workers surrounded Parliament and demanded to have free and unrestricted access to its business the BBC would report that with headlines about "Peoples Power"

WALKING WITH KINGS AND DUKES

There are few better ways to converse than while taking a walk. (Apart from anything, you can look at the scenery while your fellow conversationalist is boring you stiff with interruptions to your desire to hear yourself speak). Muriel Gray's programme Walkie Talkie (C4. 8.30pm). has included some very worthwhile wandering talkers. Arthur Scargill's explanation of class could not be faulted. He pointed out that there are only two classes and went on to develop his point in terms which our Declaration of Principles use. When Gray raised the matter of the middle class. Scargill pointed out that it was a mythical entity and that TV presenters like her, dependent upon their salaries in order to live, are in the working class. Two weeks later Muriel was walking with the Duke of Westminister, the richest man in Britain She did not need to ask him which class he was in. She ended the walk by asking if he would give her some of his money. He stopped smiling and walking and stood idle like a Duke. Rumours that he is shortly to move into a terraced house down Coronation Street are to be dismissed; those homes are for us. not them.

Steve Coleman

They said it in 89 (1990)

From the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

JANUARY

• The industry has been drawn by commercial motives to reduce the crew on flights, with two pilots and sometimes no engineers. It’s a headlong pursuit of commercial gain at the expense of passenger safety—Terry Middleton, International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations, on the British Midland crash.
• I am a great attender of second-hand sales for charities in my constituency. You can get very good bargains—Peter Lloyd, Under Secretary for Social Security.
• Twenty years after the war on poverty was abandoned, this crippler of human potential again stalks the nation . . .  over half a million of our children are homeless, living in alleyways and anguish, eating out of dumpsters and selling their bodies to stay alive in an underworld of fear and exploitation—Mary Futrell. President of the USA National Education Association.
• There will always be the needy and distressed, but not in large numbers—Baroness Phillips. Chair, Association for the Prevention of Theft in Shops.
• I have learned not to talk to the press— Edwina Currie.
• All is fair in love, war and parliamentary politics—John Smith. Labour Shadow Chancellor.
• We must learn to avoid crises, since we cannot depend on our ability to manage them once they develop—Robert McNamara. US Secretary of Defence under Kennedy.

FEBRUARY

• Does God care whether England has a goal-scoring striker?—Bishop of Liverpool.
• I'm an Australian. I believe in equality— Rupert Murdoch.
• Many people cannot get money from banks and with the money they would get from selling a kidney they can start a new life—Count Rainer Rene Adellmann. a trader in kidney transplants.
• It's a shame, really, that people feel it necessary to criticise the Thatcher government after ten years' Conservative rule— Roseanne Serelli, Young Conservative
• How can we escape the logical conclusion of the market-place that for the elderly and the chronically sick the most economic solution is death—Dr Iona Heath North London GP
• It's just called "The Bible" now—we dropped the word “Holy" to give it more mass market appeal—Judith Young, publishers Hodder and Stoughton.
• I am a socialist, I always will be—David Owen.
• Since I became a Christian. I have got a much bigger house and three cars. Isn't God wonderful? Praise the lord!—American TV evangelist.

MARCH

• Space is almost infinite. In fact it is infinite. There's a lot of uncharted water in space—US Vice-President Dan Quayle.
• I think we have attacked the Royal Family too much. We could destroy the social fabric—Lord Stevens. Chairman, United Newspapers.
• We, as professionals, said it was just too bad that we lost the Belgrano—Rear-Admiral Gualto Allara. commander of the Argentinian sea forces, Falklands War.
• From my knowledge of South Africa, it is made up of many and varied peoples— Margaret Thatcher.
• She's the most marketable leader ever—Peter Fluck, Spitting Image, on Thatcher.
• It can't get any worse. When it rains here we put buckets in the corridors. This is a big. dirty hospital we can't afford to clean. The food is poor, the laundry is rotten. We work enormously hard only to be told "cut down, we can't afford you "—Robert Johnson, consultant surgeon, Royal Infirmary. Manchester.
• I have done nothing wrong. I don't know why people are after me—Pamella Bordes.

APRIL

• I've never had a job in my life—Rob Walker, of the Johnny Walker whisky family.
• The new development is going to bring a lot of employment to the local community. Think of all the cleaning ladies that are going to be needed—Estate agent. Docklands.
• After I met working men, I became a totally and completely changed person. These men from the Gorbals impressed me. because they were prepared to fight and die for British society and what had it done for them? It had done a great deal for people like me. but what had it done for them?—Lord Whitelaw.
• The wages of sin is increased circulation—Lord Ardwick, ex-newspaper editor, on the press.
• We are only now beginning to use the techniques Hitler was using 50 years ago—Harvey Thomas, public relations consultant.
• These days a lot of people out here are mentally sick and should be hospitalised, but money is the factor that keeps them here. If you have money, no matter how mad you are. you could be in a good place—Joseph, one of London's homeless.
• I see things in black and white—Terry Dicks. Tory MP.

MAY

• It's difficult to get a lot of pleasure out of material things—Property millionaire Stuart Goldenberg.
• I am a glutton for punishment—Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor.
• What about the poor, what about the oppressed? Well, if you carry on like that, we will always have them—Bob Payton, millionnaire "Pizza King ".
• In a bad week, we pay the bills or we buy food. We always try to meet the bills first, then we see what is left—Norman Goodwin, Social Security claimant.
• Money does give you more choice in certain areas—Property millionaire Stuart Goldenberg.
• She was a Cordon Bleu cook and about to learn flower arranging—Andrew Neil on Pamella Bordes.

JUNE

• We want to be good citizens in countries where we invest—Sultan of Brunei, the world’s richest man.
• A third of the total budget goes on storing and moving the food surpluses. It's shameful when much of the world is going hungry—Michael McGowan, MEP for Leeds.
• This is more fascist rather fascism— Peking worker, on the massacre there.
• I may not even vote, for all the good they do. Politicians are all the same, aren't they?—Lilian Hurley, secretary of a residents' association in Lambeth.
• The more extreme a politician's views, the fewer actual points he tends to make in an argument—Professor Guy Cumberbatch.
• You know this committee talks rather like the Bank of England. When something fails, we say it has limited success— Nicholas Budgen, Tory MP, member of the Treasury Select Committee.
• You must be awfully busy— The Queen, to President Bush.

JULY

• Like other Old Etonians, his problem is that he's never had to argue with a woman before—Tam Dalyell on Paul Channon, then Minister of Transport.
• Airports are not very good at giving out information because information dissemination is not very profit-making—John Boyle chairman Tour Operators' Council
• For all supermarkets to reduce chill cabinet temperatures to 5°C would cost £250 million. It is unnecessary—Dr Richard Pugh, chief quality controller, Tesco Stores, on the listeria outbreak.
• A lot of our success in war is because we have this restrained aggression in us. and it comes out if we take too much alcohol—John Dore, British Consul for Benidorm on the Costa Brava, on British lager louts.
• We would rather have hooligans than empty beds—Pedro Terpault, President Costa del sol Hotel Owners' Association.
• Your strength is our strength. And your victory is our victory—Enoch Powell, to Russia.

AUGUST

• We were in a terrible mess at that time—Denis Healey on his spell as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• One's not surprised by anything in politics—Judy Steel. David Steel’s wife.
• What we really need is rain, sleet or snow until September so that the children go back to school with new shoes—Ian Ritchie, shoe manufacturers C & J Clark, on the hot summer.
• Lumps of sewage are not very pleasant aesthetically—Malcolm Gunton, Assistant Director of Environmental Health for Havant, on the state of Hayling Island's beaches.
• It is totally unacceptable to lie in advertisements but, like all industries, estate agents want to make their goods look as attractive as possible—Trevor Kent, President National Association of Estate Agents.
• I love it. It’s just like combat. It's the real thing—Wall Street investment broker on his job
• It’s just the scale that's different—Multi-millionaire Malcolm Forbes on his 70th birthday party, which cost him at least £l million.
• Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism. And we are setting out to do just that— Lech Walesa.
• Cricket is a business, not a sport: it's about balance sheets—Simon Hughes, Middlesex fast bowler.
• I know very little about apartheid—Mike Gatting, captain of the rebel cricket tour to South Africa.

SEPTEMBER

• You've got to be a bit like a cockcroach to run your own business—Professor Paul Burns.
• The company's not a charity. It's there to make a profit—Redundant BP worker.
• I suppose I spend around £100,000 a year on polo excluding the cost of the horses and they can cost anywhere from £500 to £15,000 each. I hope it doesn't get too expensive—Polo player Brod Munro-Wilson.
• Trade unions do not cause inflation, governments do—Tory MP Terry Dicks, on the ambulance crews' pay claim.
• My politics are those of bewilderment— John Cleese, on his switch from the SDP to the Green Party.
• How many times has there got to be appalling accidents at sea before companies stop putting commercial considerations before safety?—Judge Jonathon Crabtree. Beverley Crown Court.
• I hope I never get so old I get religious— Ingmar Bergman.

OCTOBER

• It's a dialogue of the deaf and it's not good enough—Tom Sawyer, chairman of Labour Party Home Policy Committee, on their annual conference
• There is a huge financial investment in the cholesterol scare—Dr Michael De-Bakey, heart surgeon.
• Nobody will ever believe me but I have never been that interested in promoting myself—Edwina Currie.
• I can come to terms with the idea that my son might die because of his illness, but not because of a shortage of money— David McKenna, whose six-year old son had cancer treatment postponed because of a cash-caused shortage of beds at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.
• And remember fear and greed are the prime incentives—Peter Wheeler of Corporate Charisma, a company advising MPs on their TV image.

NOVEMBER

• Shabby suits, sweaty faces and dated hairstyles could cost some MPs their seats at the next general election—Letter to MPs from TV image consultants.
• Women, with certain exceptions, have little to offer the House of Commons—Tory MP John Carlisle.
• Its not very encouraging, is it, to know that one of your neighbours is on the dole and from a foreign country?—Yee-Chong, Docklands resident, on local council tenants.
• A decade ago Mrs Thatcher said she was going to transform my life, and by golly she has. I have dreams of getting my hands round her throat—Mary Martin, widow and lifelong Tory voter.
• You can't just turn up and join, like the local Conservative Association, you know—Ray Dinnis, huntsman, on membership of the Hunt.

DECEMBER

• If Dickens came back he would be quite shocked. He would think: "This has a nasty familiar ring about it. I remember things like this"—Brian Redhead, on Crisis at Christmas.
• Why can our children not be taught about England's heroes, instead of vague subjects like social trends?—Tory MP John Stokes.
• I love spending money and it's nice to have restraints and constraints—Olga Polizzi, millionairess daughter of Charles Forte, head of Trusthouse Forte.
• Policy is important yes. but these are things over which people's perceptions change with the state of the economy—Conservative backbencher.
• I think he's very lucky to get away with all English gentleman balls—Tory minister, on Anthony Meyer.
• This is a capitalist country after all—Paul McCartney.

Labour's hypocrisy (1990)

From the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the current ambulance dispute grinds on with the Tory government deploying troops in an attempt to break the strike, so the hypocritical cant of the Labour Party makes itself increasingly clear. At every opportunity Labour attacks the government for using troops and the police when, according to Harriet Harman, a Labour spokeswoman, the dispute could be resolved by the conciliatory and amicable arbitration her party favours (World at One. Radio 4, 23 November).

This contrasts with the Labour Party's own history, when in power, of using the forces of the state against the working class. The record of this should be required reading for all those workers who may be thinking of voting Labour at the next General Election.

Here is Labour's record for using troops to break strikes. 1945: Dockers. 1946: Smithfield porters. Southampton dockers. 1947: Road transport workers (including Smithfield), dockers, Tower Bridge operators. 1948: Buckingham Palace boiler-room workers, dockers (State of emergency declared under Emergency Powers Act of 1920). 1949: Dockers, Smithfield road haulage drivers, gas maintenance workers. 1966: seamen. 1975: Glasgow refuse collectors. 1977: Air traffic control assistants, firemen. 1978: Naval dockyard workers.

During the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978-9 Merlyn Rees, the then Labour Home Secretary, informed Parliament of the plans made to protect the interests of British capitalism:

The government were ready at any time to call on the assistance of the Services and to proclaim a state of emergency should that have been necessary. The contingency plans were kept constantly under review by ministers. 160 service instructors were trained and 15,000 servicemen were recalled from leave over the New Year period and kept on short notice. Detailed contingency plans had been prepared for requisitioning of tankers and restricting the use of fuel to priority purposes. To put the plans for requisitioning tankers into effect would have required a proclamation of a state of emergency. If necessary parliament would have been recalled. In the event it has not been necessary to put any of these plans into operation. (Hansard, 15 January 1979. col. 1318)

When the Labour government did eventually use the troops during this major industrial dispute it was against . . .  the ambulancemen:

Ambulance crews were particularly badly paid, with a minimum basic rate of 38.44p per week and the rejection of their claim for a two-thirds increase on 12 January led to their participation in the general local authority workers one-day stoppage on 22 January. (Troops in Strikes, S. Peak, the Cobden Trust. 1984)

The Labour Party administration of capitalism under Callaghan replied by calling in the troops:

In London 50 army vehicles and 85 police were brought into use with the police providing the first line of cover backed up by the volunteer services, and troops only being summoned when these could not cope. (p. 144)

Workers should not just recall the anti-working class actions of past Labour governments but should also understand why. It is the working class who produce the wealth in society and it is the exploitation of their labour-power that has created the vast accumulation of wealth represented by the means of production and distribution. These are not owned by the workers but by the capitalist class and are used to make profits irrespective of workers' unfulfilled needs and wants. This state of affairs is made possible because the capitalist class control the state through Parliament where its various political parties, including the Labour Party, now sit. The Labour Party, throughout its various terms in office, has always supported the interests of Capital against Labour because it is a capitalist party. It has never been, is not and never will be a socialist party.

Our material class interests are diametrically opposed to the employers and their political agents. Capitalism offers us nothing and we must organise democratically and take the necessary political action to establish socialism. There is no alternative.

Richard Lloyd