Snakes and ladders (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is one game which has been going on too long and too fruitlessly for the people who have been forced to play it. The housing problem which we know today came in with capitalism and has defied over a century's efforts to reform it out of existence. The working class are still lost among the Snakes and Ladders, still bemused by the measures which, the politicians assure them, will improve the housing situation but which turn out to have no effect on the problem. The ladders are few and what there are of them are short and rickety. The snakes are many and they are long and slippery and venomous. The promised land—the square marked “Home" is as far away as ever.

That black thing which we now call the Housing Problem was born in the intense transformation of this country during the Industrial Revolution. The break up of the agricultural communities forced the farm workers into the towns, where the greedy factories were demanding human labour. These people had to have somewhere to live, even if this was a secondary consideration to their ability to produce a profit for their employers. As they were only workers, there was no especial need to provide them with adequate washing and sanitary facilities; no need either to give them an excess of living space and fresh air. So the men who had lately spent their days in the wind and the sun were stacked away, when their stint in the factories was done, into cellars, into the back-to-backs, and into the court houses. In their book The Bleak Age the Hammonds record this description of such homes in Manchester in the 1840’s:

They are built back to back; without ventilation or drainage; and, like a honeycomb, every particle of space is occupied. Double rows of these house form courts, with, perhaps, a pump at one end and a privy at the other, common to the occupants of about twenty houses.

For the capitalist class, the Industrial Revolution was no time for thinking about anything other than making money. Few of them were farseeing enough to realise that bad housing was a false economy, because it could spread disease the cost of which could wipe out a lot of the profit to be made from the pale, emaciated wretches who lived like vermin in the squalid homes of the expanding industrial towns.

A cholera epidemic in 1832 highlighted this fact and in 1851 came the first Public Acts dealing with housing—The Common Lodging Houses Act and The Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Act. These were thus the first of the many ladders to be propped up for the working class and, typically, they turned out to be snakes after all. The Acts gave local authorities certain powers which were supposed to enable them to combat the housing problem, but these powers were hardly used—for the good, sound, capitalist reason that the cost of doing so was prohibitive. Since then there have been any number of other Acts dealing with housing. Sometimes the Statute Book has become so choked with legislation that another Act has been needed to clear up the mess and to consolidate the existing measures. Nowadays the term “The Housing Acts” is taken to refer to no less than thirteen separate Acts and to other closely related legislation such as the Town and Country Planning Acts.

Hardly a trick has been left untried. All manner of financial juggling has been authorised, many kinds of inducements have been offered to housing authorities to build. The ladders have all proved to be snakes. The 1923 Housing Act, which was Neville Chamberlain’s brainchild, was supposed to encourage private building for sale, so that the buyers would leave their “intermediate” houses to be hungrily occupied by people from the slums. Chamberlain and his experts forgot, however, that the majority of people under capitalism have to live within the limits of their wage. In 1923 there were so many unemployed, and wages were so low, that very few workers could afford the deposit on a house, even though it was only a few pounds. The whole idea of the Act quickly collapsed. In 1924 they had another go. The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of that year provided for Exchequer grants for houses to let. The capitalist class themselves dismantled that ladder; in 1932 the Ray Committee on Local Expenditure recommended the abolition of all Exchequer aid for housing other than that for rehousing slum dwellers because the economics of the thing did not justify government aid. This recommendation was put into effect by the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1933.

So it has gone on through the years. One government after another has produced its plausible schemes to tackle the problem once and for all, but every one has failed. In November, 1960, Mr. Henry Brooke, who was then Minister of Housing, apparently decided that the problem was not, after all, one of building houses so much as putting baths into the houses which did not have them. Admitting that in England and Wales there were three million houses which were “far from ideal,” he announced: “The battle for a bath in every home has begun.” But before Mr. Brooke could let off his first cannon he had lost his job as Minister of Housing to Dr. Charles Hill. Dr. Hill had the bright idea of going to have a look at the slums himself, but almost as soon as he had come back he, too, was removed from the job and replaced by yet somebody else who was going to clear up the mess—Sir Keith Joseph. Sir Keith also went to visit the slums, and the slums—in the shape of some homeless members of the working class—came to visit him, giving the press some fetching pictures of Sir Keith’s wife smiling bravely as she admitted several scruffy children to her posh home. Then the new Minister had an inspiration. He would speed up slum clearance! He even went so far as to mention Cable Street, Stepney, as one place which could do with some attention. Everybody was amazed; here was obviously a Minister of Housing who knew a slum when he saw one.

This is typical of the floundering which has accompanied this past century of reform, some of it administered by wordy politicians who have climbed to high office after notching up a dismal record on housing. And what has been the result of it all, up to the present? You can take your pick from the facts and figures which clamour for attention. In 1954 there were officially 850,000 houses in England and Wales which were condemned as unfit; this figure is a wild understatement, because it only took account of the slums which local authorities thought they could clear, instead of those which they thought should be cleared. And faster than any slums are pulled down, others take their place. In July last year Dr. Lichfield, an urban economist who had just left the Ministry of Housing, said that over twenty-three per cent. of our houses were built before 1875 and that even if the present rate of slum clearance were doubled there would still be a million of them left in 1982.

Capitalist politicians are fond of telling us that the housing problem springs from a physical difficulty of building enough homes for those who want them. It is nothing of the kind. Rich people simply do not have housing difficulties; these are reserved exclusively for the working class, who must budget for their housing, just like the other essentials of living, against a restricted wage packet. And that is something which no reform of capitalism can alter.

It is true that the majority of workers do not live in what are officially classified as slums. Even so, the poverty of their lives is reflected in their homes. We all know what an average three-up-two-down working class house, perhaps the pride of its occupant’s life, is like. We know how cramped are the rooms, how the doors don’t fit, how the draughts whistle around in the winter, how poor are the materials of which the place is built. Yet officially these people have no housing problem. They are off the list.

The fact is that, however many reforms batter themselves against it, the problem of housing will remain for the working class and all of them will be afflicted by it. As long as capitalism lasts none of them can escape it. After all, the first rule of Snakes and Ladders is that it is a game for any number of players.

Ivan

Party Notes. (1908)

Party News from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Branch continues to do well. Each week brings fresh tidings of meetings held and literature sold. They attend meetings of other parties, asking questions and offering opposition, and selling Manifestoes. This is distinctly good business. On Jan. 19th Moses Baritz was refused permission to oppose an I.L.P. speaker. Owing to his persistency the Manchester (Central) branch closed the meeting, whereupon Baritz addressed the audience and afterwards had a good sale of our literature.

* * *

At the Co-operative Hall, Burnley, last month, Mr. Philip Snowden was asked bow he reconciled his position with the compacts made by l.L.P. candidates with the Liberals at Leicester and Halifax at the general election. Mr. Snowden denied that any compacts existed.

* * *

A Manchester comrade has sent Mr. Snowden, in a registered envelope, a copt of the Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. in which full particulars of these compacts are given. Mr. Snowden will therefore be enabled to reply to the question differently when he speaks at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Feb. 2nd.

* * *

The Manifesto is the most comprehensive statement of our position yet made, and all comrades should do their best to push it. A Third Edition is now ready, the second edition of 5,000 being sold out within seven months. This edition should be sold out before the Easter Conference.

* * *

The second of the Kautsky pamphlets will he shortly on sale at a penny. Branches can be supplied at the usual price of 13 copies for 9d.

* * *

The last month has seen a large number of debates, and preparations for several are even now in progress.

* * *

At Poplar on Jan. 12th Anderson debated with R. C. K. Ensor the question of “Reform v. Revolution.” Ensor boasts of being the best educated man in East London, but his arguments on behalf of reform were of the usual kind dealt with in these columns. Will Crooks M.P., was present at the debate and assisted the proceedings by shouting “liar!” “liar!” during the course of Anderson’s speech.

* * *

Although wit and learning were thus combined against us in Poplar, and although our man had to speak first to draw the crowd, some of the audience will have been given furiously to think as a result of hearing a word for the other side.

* * *

The Islington Branch have fixed up a debate in Grovedale Hall, Upper Holloway, on Thursday, Feb. 6th, at 8 p.m., between A. Anderson and Councillor Dey on the question whether “Socialism would be detrimental to the interests of the People.”

* * *

Meetings will be continued on subsequent Thursdays until further notice in Grovedale Hall.

* * *

Fitzgerald debated at Battersea with an Anarchist on the 12th Jan. All the other Anarchists present disagreed with their exponent’s exposition, with the result that Fitzgerald debates again, with another Anarchist, in the same hall. Watch Battersea’s lecture list.

* * *

Tooting Branch have challenged the Rev. Waldron to debate, and he has accepted. Negotiations are pending.

* * *

We have received a letter from Comrade T. Dix, from Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A., in which he draws a gloomy picture of poverty in the land of the free. He corroborates our conviction that there is no essential difference between the conditions of the working class in Protectionist and in Free Trade countries. Comrade Dix sends fraternal greetings to his old comrades. He will be remembered as the secretary of the Tottenham Branch a year or so ago.

* * *

We have pleasure in reporting the formation of a branch of the Party in Clapham. There is plenty of S.P.G.B. work to be done there and anyone willing to assist should communicate with the secretary (see Branch Directory).

* * *

Romford Division Branch are making satisfactory progress in their new Club premises. On Jan. 19th J. Kent dealt with other parties, specially criticising the Ilford Socialist Party. The discussion was long and lively, and was eventually adjourned to Feb. 2nd.

* * *

At the S.P.G.B. Club, 27, York Road, Ilford, a speaker’s class is held every Thursday, at 9 p.m., conducted by J. Kent.

K.

Russia 1917: As We Saw It (2017)

From the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard described the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies as a 'broken reed' for supporting the continuance of the war.

That we have due justification for refusing to slap the Russian on the back, with expressions of sickly sentiment, congratulating him upon having achieved his emancipation (sic !) is clearly shown by the fact that the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies despatched a congratulatory message to the Leeds conference in which an invitation to Stockholm was embodied.

Despite the dearth of news from Petrograd and other centres we are in a position to know that the Russian capitalist class still hold the field, both economically and politically. If it were not so, then M. Kerensky, clearly an agent of the Russian ruling class, would have been removed long ago. Indeed, his election could never have been even mooted by the victorious proletariat.

Signs are not wanting that the workers out there are already losing strength, as the following words issued in manifesto form by the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies to the Commander of German troops on the Russian front in reply to the pourparlers with a view to concluding peace, bear witness:

"He has forgotten that Russia knows that the overthrow of her Allies would mean the overthrow of Russia and the end of her political liberty." Daily Chronicle, 10.6.1917.

Such words are hardly indicative of class-consciousness and form strong contrast to the much-lauded "no annexation, no indemnity" pronouncement.

When, too, it is pointed out that just prior to the issuing of this statement a meeting of the self-same deputies had stood up and vociferously cheered M. Kerensky, the new figurehead of Russian oppression, it will become increasingly apparent that in giving trust to such a body the Russian worker is relying upon the proverbial broken reed.

Small wonder, then, that the labour hacks in this country are so anxious to assist in their usual slimy, game of confusing working-class minds and conflicting vital issues.

If proof should be wanted of Kerensky's little game ― and, needless to say, he has been pointed to as a genuine Socialist by the prostitute Press ― it is contained in the following extract from an Order of the Day issued by the wily Minister of War to the Russian troops:

"Remember that whoever looks behind, stops, or draws back will lose everything. Do not forget that if you defend not the honour, liberty, and dignity of the country your names will be cursed. The will of the people must rid the country and the world of violators and usurpers. Such is the high deed to which I call you."― " Daily News, 28.5.17.

It, would appear as though Kerensky's mortal fear lest the wretched soldiers look back is prompted by a dread that his own game might be discovered. The chances are, too, that if he, the Russian soldier, stands to lose everything, he will also be losing his chance of a German bullet. Certain it is that enough evidence has been forthcoming to conclusively prove the reluctance of a very large proportion of the Russian Army to continue the senseless slaughter which has transformed the European plains into vast graveyards.

(Socialist Standard, July 1917)

On The Box (1998)

TV Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last Friday I found myself in a television studio feeling unable to take part in what was going around me without wanting to throw up. I am seldom at a loss for words, but I am struggling now to describe this programme with any degree of objectivity or enthusiasm. I wouldn't know whether to call it a game show or a quiz show. And I am still not quite sure what the point of it was. True the information I had received on it had not endeared it to me long before I was due to take my place, along with three other socialists, in the studio audience. I rarely watch programmes of this ilk. A woman representing the Audience Research Unit had promised me we would be involved in a lively debate. Now I think I could be forgiven for believing this might lead to an opportunity to voice ideas sympathetic to socialist thinking. I didn't know then that the studio audience had been—how can I put it? — manipulated.

We arrived at the television centre several hours before the programme was due to go out, whereupon we were ushered upstairs, along corridors, round corners until we finally reached a place called "hospitality", but which looked like a works canteen. We were invited to help ourselves to tea and coffee. I jokingly asked if we got a glass of wine. Sharon from the Audience Research Unit told me "We can't run to that." I bet they "ran to it" for the guest celebrities. Someone called out names from a list and about six people marched off to another part of the building. The same people turned up later, already in place in the studio, and did most of the talking once the programme had got underway. And I had thought it was going to be a free for all. What naivete on my part; but this was my first time ever on television. Of course this did not necessarily mean we could not voice our opinions, but what it did mean to us was that having once discovered that people had been previously singled out for their contribution, and having realised also that the programme was tasteless and a load of rubbish to boot, we became hard put not to sit in the front row of the studio audience with arms folded and wearing, each of us, expressions of doom. It was so awful.

This is what was on offer. A panel of three celebrities (one of them describing herself as a "socialist anarchist" in some information handed out to us), a studio audience taken from a cross-section of the public, a well-known name to "host" the programme, and a chair reminiscent of the Mastermind hot seat. Three people in the news that week had been asked along to occupy the chair, one at a time. Each member of the panel would ask questions of the newsworthy guest with the intention, I think, of making him squirm. The audience got its turn, but the people who had been primed beforehand spoke first and had the most to say. Anyone lucky enough to get in after that was often cut short so that the next chair guest could be introduced. But not before we had voted. We were asked to hold up a card with an H on one side and a V on the other. H for hero, V for villain. Such responsibility! We three didn't bother, except that I did vote once in an attempt to look as though I was joining in. Debate was very limited before we were expected to make that all-important decision as to whether the chair guest was a hero or a villain. One contestant for the chair was the landlord of a pub who had incurred local disapproval for wishing to employ male strippers on his premises. The host went to town on this one with a line in jokes and puns on male genitalia, the kind of which I had given up laughing at when I was thirteen years old, and I didn't laugh much then either. "Turkey's giblets" was one of the expressions used. It was all so pathetic that my fellow-socialists and I looked at our watches and yawned. It was going to be some time before we could repair to the pub.

It is no wonder that when the programme went out the cameras seemed to have missed the three of us. We could be seen as three blurred images. It was obvious that someone in authority had given us the thumbs down. What self-respecting producer, concerned for his ratings, is going to allow shots to be taken of three people who look as though they are taking part in a mass suicide? What a relief. Who wants acquaintances coming up to them in the street the next day saying "I saw you on telly last night" when in reality that turned out to be the last place they ever wanted to be. And talking of reality-that little square box in the corner of our living room is not reality whatever else anyone thinks it is. Even members of the celebrity panel looked bored and lethargic and they were getting paid. Since we live in a world where money is the name of the game then perhaps audiences should be paid too. Not that a freebie could ever be any inducement for me to take part in such tripe.

Heather Ball

Housing in Industry (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most persistent fallacies with which the worker seeks to explain away bis present miseries is the belief that things were handled much better in the past. Nowhere is this more apparent than when we are confronted by the tragedy of bad housing. “It never used to be like this,” runs the argument, “there was once plenty of accommodation available, especially for young people who could start life with a decent home.” We have all heard this line of reasoning as well as the inevitable conclusion, “that our problems are a product of the modern world and could be cured by a return to ancient virtues.”

History, however, proves such an idea to be quite wrong and that, far from being modern, housing problems are as old as property society itself. Unfortunately poverty and suffering are not considered to be very interesting, so that while there is a mass of information on the great buildings of the world, very little is available on the dwellings of those who by their labour made such works possible.

In the lands where the winters are hard and cold, shelter is a desperate necessity, a matter of life and death, while to be homeless is a grim experience. The burning of houses and the destruction of cities has long been one of war’s cruellest weapons, and throughout history the exploitation of the need for somewhere to live has been one of the nastiest and most profitable of rackets. It is in the great and thriving cities of the world that this racket has had the greatest, scope.

Ancient Rome was the capital of a vast empire, and people flocked to it as today they flock to London and New York. This created a situation that was ideal for exploitation on a grand scale. Most people lived, not in the elegant villas that are usually portrayed as typical Roman houses, but in blocks of tenements. Built of brick and concrete, their construction was shoddy to an extent that would have shocked even a modern jerry-builder. Builders economized on bricks to such a degree that the buildings often collapsed, and a decree of Augustus forbade the building of tenements more than 70 feet high. Tenants could purchase a room or a floor, but usually rented space at an exorbitant price. Water on the premises was rare, and fires a common disaster. Many of the famous figures of Rome owed their wealth to this source. Such was the hardship, that Julius Caesar used it to buy political advantage by giving a year's rent to all below a certain income level.

Nearer to our time, the 16th century was the turning point for England in general and London in particular. Previously London bad been a town on the edge of the large network of European trade; now it became the centre of a much greater one, spreading over continents. Its population mounted steadily and suburbs sprawled beyond the city walls. People flocked in from the country, many driven by economic changes, and overcrowding became intense as ground rents soared. Meanwhile from France and the Netherlands came thousands of craftsmen to start up business. These were accused of taking the houses of the Londoners, and there were anti-alien riots. A popular demand was that provincials should be sent back home, where it was alleged there were “plenty of empty houses,” and to  "stop pestering the houses of London.” Or in modern terms, “Stop the drift to the South.”

Another common misconception to be found mainly amongst “progressives," is that grim housing conditions began with the Victorians and the Industrial Revolution. Most books on town planning and urban development give this impression by swinging from the expensive buildings of the Georgian era and contrasting them with working class housing of the 19th century.

But the conditions described by Engels in 1848 in such terrible slums as the Rockeries could have applied equally to earlier periods. Already in the 17th century, the pattern of the 19th century slum, large houses originally built for the wealthy and broken into make-shift tenements, was well established. It is a pattern which persists to this day. In Commonwealth London a house in the Dowgate Ward was reported to hold 11 married couples and 15 single persons, while a ten room house in Silver Street was inhabited by 10 families, all of whom managed to fit in lodgers. Even the 20th century would be hard put to rival this for overcrowding.

But if the Victorians did not invent degrading housing conditions, they certainly spread them far and wide. Mean housing estates covered what had been a green and pleasant land, and this not only in the old industrial areas but in hitherto thinly populated parts of the country. So now the workers, in addition to living in crumbling old houses, could live in cramped badly built ones put up specially for them.

The 19th century saw the beginning of modern methods of compiling information, and reports and accounts from this period are numerous. But statistics make dull reading: far better to go into the streets of any town, large or small, and look at the rows of grim little houses known as bye-law houses. These were built as a result of Acts of Parliament that gave to local authorities powers to introduce bye-laws controlling housing conditions. The point about these houses, bare brick terraces of the meanest proportions, often back-to-back with no garden and with the living room opening on to the street, is that they were an improvement on what had existed before. This fact speaks more eloquently than any report of what conditions had been like before.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic in New York City similar legislation was being enacted. An act of 1867 made it unlawful to cover the entire lot when building a tenement. A backyard of 10 feet had to be provided. It became illegal to let rooms that were completely underground. The ceiling had to be 1 foot above kerb level. A later Act insisted on such luxuries as a window in every room. Again, these were improvements. And as with England even these meagre efforts came after many years of agitation.

The 20th century has continued this story. Numerous reports, years of work by well meaning people, constant propaganda and political promises, have produced a string of feeble Acts and bye laws. The success of which readers can judge for themselves.

Les Dale

Exhibition Review: The Peace Museum, Bradford (2017)

Exhibition Review from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are plenty of museums that cover wars, the armed forces and military history, but rather few that deal with peace and peace movements. The only accredited one in Britain is Bradford Peace Museum, founded in 1994, which has connections with the International Network of Museums for Peace (museumsforpeace.org) and the Division of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. In 1997 the local council declared Bradford a ‘City of Peace’, though it is hard to see what that achieves.

It’s not a large museum, but there is plenty of interesting material, covering the period from World War One down to the present day. There are original documents, banners, posters and other objects relating to the two world wars, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, in the main, as well as material on migrants to Bradford, including recent refugees and asylum seekers. Aldermaston Marches and activities at Greenham Common illustrate some of the efforts of peace movements. In the last two years of World War One there was an active, if nowadays little-remembered, anti-war movement among women in Bradford.

A copy of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty is accompanied by a quote from Ferdinand Foch, who was Supreme Allied Commander during the war: ‘This is not peace, it’s an armistice for twenty years.’ He meant that Germany had not been punished sufficiently, but even talk of an armistice was a bit optimistic, considering all the fighting that took place between the two world wars.

There is a mention of a claim made (it is not said by who) in 2003, that there were two superpowers, the USA and worldwide public opinion, which is just wishful thinking. A quote is shown from Norman Angell (who wrote a best-selling book The Great Illusion in 1910, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934 and was for a short period a Bradford MP): ‘The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.’ Unfortunately this naive remark underlines the fact that the museum exhibits do not include any attempt to explain why wars break out, or references to the role of capitalism. 

Paul Bennett

Colonialism (1961)

Book Review from the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Twilight of European Colonialism By Stewart C. Easton. (Methuen, 50s.)

When the Second World War started, there were about 700 million people living under colonial rule. Twenty years later there were not many more than 100 million; most notably, the number under British rule had been virtually cut in half.

It was to all intents and purposes inevitable that the colonies should have developed their nationalist organisations, to demand that a native ruling class should have the right to exploit their country's mineral wealth and human labour. In the Congo, this desire has bred nationalism within nationalism, with the Katangese wanting to be left alone with the immense riches that are under their feet.

Apart from such complications, and unless a colony has a settler population— as in Central Africa—or unless there is a military problem involved—as in Cyprus —the road to independence is usually fairly smooth. Ghana is the classic example of this; and it has had its effect all over Africa.

When independence has been agreed to, there is a lot of political work to be done. A constitution must be drafted, political parties must work out their programmes for the new state, elections mast be arranged. This, and the political events which have preceded independence, make the subject matter of Mr. Easton's book.

It is obvious that such a work will leave a lot unsaid. The author knows what the suppression of the African native has meant, and what it must lead to. The African’s dignity, he says, " . . . was constantly insulted”; he was regarded as ". . .  a menace to the most uncomely white woman . . .” And now, such is the tradition of bitterness that it is too late to make amends.

On the other hand. Mr. Easton has a trick of playing down the savage history of colonialism. He almost whitewashes Leopold II. The black story of the missionaries is summarised; “Inspired by Livingstone's exploits, thousands of missionaries entered the field, and traders followed soon after.” A simple soul would think it was all one big coincidence.

We should be able to take all this in our stride. There is need for a political reference book to supplement the economic studies of the colonies, and the blood-chilling works of men like E. D. Morel. Political developments have their place in history, and we should all be familiar with them. For this Mr. Easton, in his agreeably smooth and economical style, has produced a very adequate book.

Ivan.

A Week of Meetings in London (1967)

Party News from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain organised a demonstration for Socialism in Trafalgar Square on Sunday afternoon, September 3rd. Despite uncertain weather there was a large crowd throughout the 2½ hour meeting, listening to the socialist case and putting questions to the speakers.

Over £16 worth of socialist pamphlets and journals were bought by interested workers, including 480 copies of the Socialist Standard. (In addition 300 Socialist Standards were sold in Hyde Park on the same day.) Our introductory leaflets in different languages were also much in demand and helped us to explain the Socialist Party’s position to workers from France, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam and elsewhere.

A photograph of the meeting which appeared next day in The Times picked out very nicely one of our slogans calling for “Abolition of the Wages System”. Surely the first time that phrase has appeared in those august columns!

Monday September 4th

The newly formed Camden group held its first meeting—on “Israel, Vietnam, Biafra— Problems for the Left”—on Monday evening. Over forty people turned up to discuss these issues.

The group meets at ‘The Enterprise’, Chalk Farm Road—which is opposite the Round House. The room is comfortable and the atmosphere relaxed and informal. So if you want to discuss socialist ideas, or have other views which you would like to give an airing, why not come along to the next meeting?

Thursday 7th September

The Socialist Party held two teach-ins on Thursday evening. One was at Conway Hall, where representatives from Oxfam, the United Nations Association, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the SPGB opened a discussion on “World Hunger—What is the solution?" Although most of those present were not members of the Socialist Party, the audience was keenly aware of the deficiencies in the ‘solutions’ to world hunger put forward by the various reformist organisations. The socialist analysis of food shortages came across as the only positive and constructive answer to this problem of capitalism.

The other teach-in, organised jointly by West London and Greenford branches, was also well-attended. There was a wide-ranging discussion on Socialism and socialist tactics, with various brands of trotskysists and other would-be socialists ‘arguing’ a case for entrism.

Sunday 10th September

The week ended with a five-hour meeting in Hyde Park. A string of party members spoke from a specially erected platform on the grass. There was some lively discussion and on more than one occasion a member of the audience was given the platform in order to explain his objections to Socialism, a socialist speaker then replying. Party literature was again selling briskly and—many workers from Germany and Austria were interested in the Wiener Freie Wort—the organ of our comrades in the League of Democratic Socialists.

Germany Revisited (1950)

From the September 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is not interested in travel articles or personal reminiscences, as Socialism is essentially an impersonal movement on philosophy. But perhaps in this case as I visited Germany for ten consecutive years before the war, and again for the first time since the war this summer, with a knowledge of Germany and plenty of good contacts, this should be useful in assessing the situation, and these reminiscences might not be so much out of place.

Firstly there are no Nazis now in Germany, nor anybody who ever subscribed to the Nazi philosophy. All the present population in British, French, or American zones were never supporters of Hitler, or at least so they say!

Those who knew Nazi Germany well will remember how almost every man, woman and child went out of his or her way to assure you that everybody was for Hitler, and the few communists or Jews that were anti-Hitler had fled abroad in shame. The towns in Nazi Germany were no place for a holiday because of the ceaseless propaganda night and day which made the atmosphere more like that of a boiler house. Munich station was always covered with a mass of flags and banners to remind visitors that Munich was “Die Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (chief town of the movement). To-day it is a ruin with no roof over the major portion. A photograph of the ruin of “ Haus Wachenfeld ” (Hitler’s mountain chalet) adorns the walls of the station at Berchtesgaden alongside a picture depicting its former beauty. Foreign visitors are interested in these things, but German’s aren’t.

Nobody talks about Hitler unless you first raise the matter. A change-over from the days when everybody had to greet everybody else or a business house or shop had to greet their customers with Heil Hitler. There was no good morning or good bye in Nazi Germany, it was all “Heil Hitler.” Everybody had to salute the banners carried by storm troopers every few minutes of the day. Photos of Hitler besmirched the walls of every cafe, restaurant, shop, business house, etc., just like those of Uncle Joe in Red Fascist Russia!

If the working class have forgotten Hitler and his night-mare, then what are they thinking about to-day? Like the working class in England, they are in a state of mind oscillating between confusion and apathy. Those who used to argue that Nazism was a special type of Socialism applicable to Germany and adapted to German needs, have now chucked over-board this argument, but they have got nothing in its place. Those many thousands one meets who have, fought on the Russian front and been prisoners of war, say they are thoroughly convinced that the Soviet system is not Socialism, and that the Russians have a much lower standard of living than the Germans were accustomed to. They were also much impressed by the high standard of living of the Commissars, and the tyranny over the masses, with the indescribable poverty of the peasants.

In Austria the present Christlische-Volks Partei, which is in power, have not been slow to capitalise anti-communist ideas by plastering the place with pictures of Austrian soldiers behind the barbed wire in Russia with the caption “Listen to us, we’ve tasted Socialism in the workers Fatherland.”

The harm that has been done to Socialism, as we of the Socialist Party understand it is incalculable both from the Nazis calling themselves Socialists and also from the Russians, who not only persist to-day, but are everywhere on the continent pretending to champion democracy. Indeed the official designation of the Russian zone of Germany is “Demokratic Deutsches Republik.”

One sees in Germany, and Austria, no Marxist literature and no indication that the workers are making up for time lost in getting an understanding of Marxism. There is nothing of the nature of a Socialist Party based on Socialist knowledge. The bookshops contain no literature which indicates that things are moving in an enlightened direction. After the first World War Germany produced a great crop of anti-war books, such as the famous “No More War” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” and hundreds of others. At present the best sellers are Churchill’s “War Time Memories,” and Rommel’s book. Anti-communist books, so common in Switzerland, are entirely absent in Germany and Austria. Nothing is rationed in either country and the black market and cigarette currency has disappeared. One sees and hears little about unemployment. Germany is busy making consumer goods perhaps one day destined to compete with England’s for the export market when trade gets really going. Austria is experiencing a wave of “prosperity” brought on by the many tourists plus Marshall Aid. In both countries American troops spend lavishly (by Austrian workers’ standards) and bring their relatives from home there.

Neither the War nor the Nazi experiences seem to have taught the workers anything useful, for many of them to-day would be only too pleased to fight against the Russians with the knowledge of America behind them, with all the financial aid and equipment that can mean.

Our case has always been that you can’t get Socialism out of war, nor does war lead to Socialism, as Lenin and others have claimed. The Germans have been through a lot of tragic experiences from which very few have learned anything, except that it is unpleasant. If the present position of Germany has any lesson for us, it is that it confirms our philosophy that Socialism comes and can come only from understanding.

Horace Jarvis

Editorial: People's Capitalism (1956)

Editorial from the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had to come and here it is—"People’s Capitalism,” the description given to the U.S.A. in an advertisement of General Electric (New Yorker, June 16, 1956). We have had "peoples' democracies,” the name given by Communists to Russia and her East European Satellites—now admitted to be thug-ridden police-states. We have had "people’s courts” in the same countries, where framed-up victims of political and personal vendettas "confess” to non-existent crimes. We have been told that this is the century of "the common man,” in which the common man is not only exploited, conscripted, intimidated and humiliated—just as he was in the century before—but in which, in addition, he is now expected to take pride in being master of his fate. Oscar Wilde’s definition of democracy seems to be particularly appropriate, "bludgeoning of the people by the people, for the people.”

The General Electric claims that American Capitalism is quite different from Capitalism anywhere else:—

   “Around the world me term 'capitalism' has been applied to economic systems which bear little resemblance to each other. Our American brand of capitalism is distinctive and unusually successful because it is a 'people's capitalism.’ All the people share in its responsibilities and benefits.”

The advertisement goes on to list the ways in which the American brand is supposed to differ from the others—and in almost every particular the list shows the falsity of the claim. Those who run Capitalism in London, Delhi, Moscow, Warsaw, governments in all the continents, all the Powers, big, medium and small, make almost identical claims. Here are the eight principles in which Americans are said to believe:—"We believe in providing opportunities for the individual to develop himself to his maximum potential mass production and low prices; high wages, high productivity and high purchasing power; "we in America believe in innovation and in scrapping the obsolete”; instalment buying; shorter hours and more leisure; "broad share ownership of American business . . . and almost everyone indirectly owns shares through insurance policies, savings banks, pension plans, mutual funds, bank accounts and other investments ”; "and finally, we in America believe deeply in competition versus the cartel.”

So little does Capitalism in the different countries differ from the above eight-point declaration that an all-in conference of Governments in United Nations would probably vote unanimously for a resolution embodying them—and then each Minister would go home to preserve the realities of Capitalism, poverty for the mass, and wealth and privilege for the few. Capitalism takes on many masks and disguises, and ingenious party vote-catchers have invented innumerable names and slogans to make capitalism acceptable to its victims, but everywhere its economic features (production, for sale and profit, the system of wage-labour, and capital investment in company shares and government bonds) sufficiently conform to a common pattern amply to justify the common destination capitalism.

What Comes After The Labour Government? (1947)

From the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Shinwell, Minister of Fuel, has resurrected an old legend. Speaking at Margate on May 7th he said: “There was a lot of talk of what kind of a Government would come in after this one, but there was only one possible kind which could come in and that was a Government even more to the left.” (News-Chronicle, May 8th, 1947.) Ever since the first Labour Government in any country took over the hopeless task of making the bitter fruits of capitalism palatable to the exploited class there have been a series of defences put out by Labour leaders. This is one of the series. The first, which does not long survive their taking office, is that Labour Government is very successful. The next is that it isn't successful but just remember the difficulties it faces. The third is that all would have been well if the workers had not embarrassed it by demanding higher wages. The fourth is that its policy was successful at home but that it ran into trouble with foreign countries (or alternatively that its foreign policy was sound but it was weak in home affairs). Fifthly and lastly, that it isn't much good, being too "right-wing," but that it will be followed by something better, something more "Left.” Space precludes going into the woolly nonsense that lies behind those terms “Left” and “Right,” beloved of the hazy and lazy-minded, but one thing we can do to enlighten Mr. Shinwell. Probably he sees himself cast for a leading role in the “Left" successor to the present Government. What he overlooks is that the reputation of being a “Leftwinger” is lost as easily as it is gained, and once lost is gone forever. All the ”Right-wingers” whom Mr. Shinwell loved to trounce in his earlier, irresponsible days as oppositionist started as he did, on the "Left." They lost their status when they joined Labour Governments and accepted responsibility for defending capitalism. Mr. Shinwell is now among them; the erstwhile critic of increased production campaigns, of conscription, and of the use of troops in strikes has now got to defend them all, and a harsh world insists on judging politicians by what they do, not by what they used to say twenty years ago.

On another score Mr. Shinwell's myth lacks foundation. History is all against it. There have been numerous Labour Governments and their experience makes nonsense of the theory that electors, having tasted of the diluted Labour brew and found it unsatisfying demand a more potent draught of the same brew next time. In Britain the 1924 Labour Government was followed by a Tory Government, the 1929 Labour Government by a Tory-Liberal-National-Labour coalition. The Australian Labour Government which was swept out of office at the 1931 election was heavily defeated by the anti-Labour United Australia Party. The present Federal Labour Government in Australia and the Labour Government in New Zealand have been losing support and seats but not to what Mr. Shinwell would call "Left-wingers.” In Western Australia a Labour Government in office for 14 years lost six seats at the recent election and is likely to be succeeded by a Liberal Government. In Germany as a whole, and in Prussia, Labour Governments after the first World War were succeeded by anti-Labour Governments and coalitions and eventually by Hitler.

It not only happens thus but it is all very natural. Those electors who supported Labour Parties ‘‘as an experiment,” or “to give them a chance,” are much more likely, when experience disappoints them, to turn back to the Tory or Liberal parties. In Germany the sequence of events was particularly disastrous. The failure of the Labour Governments to make a success of capitalism brought the Parliamentary system itself into disrepute and paved the way for the Nazis.

Only when the workers have finally shed the belief that capitalism can be made to work in their interests will they decide not to support any party of capitalism. When they do reach this level of understanding we shall not have a “ Left ” Government but Socialism.

Mr. Shinwell may perhaps have in mind the experience of Russia where the Kerensky “Labour” Government was overthrown by Communists who promptly abolished the elected Assembly because it had not a Communist majority, installed their dictatorship, and suppressed all the opposition parties, including parties like Mr. Shinwell’s.

If Mr. Shinwell shares the opinion of most of his Labour colleagues he does not regard the Communist dictatorship as an improvement on the British Labour Government and therefore cannot be hoping that the latter’s “Left” successor will be a Communist Government : If by chance he does think that a Communist Government is better than his own Labour Government he would be under the obligation of explaining his position in the Labour Government and Labour Party and of explaining why he remains in a Government that has so signally failed to harmonise its foreign policy with that of Russia.

The fact that Mr. Shinwell should feel it necessary to look on the prospect of a Government to some extent different from the one in which he serves is an indirect admission of the correctness of our case that Labour administration of capitalism is bound to fail; for if Labourism can succeed, as Mr. Shinwell and the Labour Party say it can, why should the workers want anything different from what they have got under Mr. Attlee and Mr. Shinwell? Yet, as the Manchester Guardian points out (April 29th, 1947), in all the resolutions placed by Labour supporters on the agenda of the Labour Party Annual Conference, there was hardly one that did not criticise the Government and demand a different policy. Almost the only resolution expressing approval was one from Dulwich: “That this Conference fully approves the present policy of the Government, which is ethically sound, and, therefore, must be politically right.” Even this reads more like an attempt to convince themselves that the policy must be right than a confident belief that it is. 

Edgar Hardcastle

"It Makes Your 'Eart Bleed" (1949)

From the June 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article packed with vital and fascinating information, Mr. Charles Graves in the Sunday Express of May 8th gave his readers the facts about the miserable plight of this year’s debutantes, and in doing so performed a valuable public service which should not pass without comment. Further, since it is possible that in some remote corner of this island there are those whose week-end reading is confined to the Bible and News of the World and remain therefore unaware of this grave social problem, it is felt that the greatest possible publicity should be given to Mr. Graves' article, of which the following is a brief summary.

First let the writer make it clear just what debutantes are. “Official debutantes,” says Mr. Graves, “are girls between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, who will be attending the Presentation Parties at Buckingham Palace on May 18 and 19.” It is not clear from Mr. Graves as to how the 584 young debutantes who are being launched this year are chosen, and this detracts slightly from the value of his article. It can be assumed, however, that in this democratic day and age and in the fourth year of Labour Party Rule that they are elected by popular ballot, and their attendance at Buckingham Palace is in no way connected with their membership of the ruling class.

What is their social function? They are the great providers of employment for as Mr. Graves points out, “What may seem to some people, at first sight, to be a great extravagance is actually of direct benefit to hundreds of workpeople in London—dressmakers, salesgirls, manicurists and other beauty parlour specialists, taxi-cab drivers, car hire firms, florists, dance academies, contract bridge teachers, waiters, wine merchants and the like.” Let the reader imagine the social unrest that would follow mass unemployment among contract bridge teachers. As the great providers they are related to the various workers mentioned above in the same way as horses are to road sweepers, rats to rat-catchers, disease to doctors, burglars to policemen, and so on. Another of their functions is in the words of Mr. Graves to provide “the traditional reason for having a season at all.” 

As is so often the case with public benefactors it is only at great personal cost and sacrifice that they become of such value to the community. The following details will give the reader some idea of the cost that they, or at least their parents, incur in “doing good.” According to Mr. Graves the lowest price for dinner frocks and ball gowns is about sixty guineas. Many of the parents in these days of Crippsian austerity are buying at less exclusive shops, but even so “cannot escape the fact that evening shoes cost six guineas or so.” The cost of a dance or ball during the season is nearly double the pre-war figure and this year a mere forty have been planned at Claridges and Londonderry House and elsewhere. Bands, flowers, food and drinks are twice the pre-war cost and £900 is not an extravagant estimate says Mr. Graves for a dance of 400 people. “One way and another it will be impossible to launch a debutante this year for less than £500. And that is a real utility price.” Such is their sad plight!

Does the writer hear a low ominous rumble of protest at what appears to be extravagance? In one poignant sentence Mr. Graves quiets this. He says, “As for the girls themselves, they are surely entitled to taste what little glamour they can before they start the drudgery of earning a living and thinking about P.A.Y.E.”

Yes, that is the gruesome unvarnished truth. Not only do these slaves to the community provide work but actually work themselves. Mr. Graves is quoted again. “The Monkey Club in Pont Street has a number of debutantes among its students who are taking such subjects as domestic science, cookery, foreign language, arts award (the history of music and art from the sixteenth century until today), music, secretarial courses, and from now onward, interior decoration. Debutantes, however, are released from any studies until the afternoon, with an occasional lecture at midday. The Principal realises that a girl who is doing the season will not have the energy to study at 10 a.m. if she has been dancing until one or two in the morning.”

Sally Ann Vivian, daughter of Lord and Lady Vivian, for instance, has had automatically to learn about red and white wines, but has still to learn bridge, which is part of the education of any modern young lady. What is more, among the many post-war deb’s who have taken jobs Mr. Graves informs us that one is actually third cook at the Bank of England.

Should the reader imagine that the strain of public duty on these young women is too great and that they are in danger of treading the path of dissipation, the writer hastens to assure him that “The average debutante does not really like even champagne. It tastes much the same to her as cider and she would just as soon drink water,” There is, of course, no connection whatsoever in the reference to champagne and the fact that the deb's are said to be launched into the season.

Enough has been said to demonstrate the unenviable lot of these young women and the plight of their parents who foot the bill, “so spare them your jealousy,” says Mr. Graves, “if you feel any. Especially when you remember that after their brief butterfly existence for three months they will go back to the cocoon of austerity like the rest of us.”

J. Lockwood

A Paddington Placard. (1913)

Party News from the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

We desire to announce to the workers of Kilburn and North Kensington that Paddington Branch is holding meetings at Victoria Rd., High Rd., Kilburn, on Wednesdays at 8.30 p.m., and at Lancaster Rd., Portobello Rd., North Kensington on Fridays at 8.30 p.m.

This announcement will also constitute an effective salute to “our nearest friends,” the sympathetic scribes of the local sheets, who want Socialism in rag-time, please.

They are somewhat perturbed at the approach of summer, and with it the Socialist Party’s street-corner propagandists. This should allay their fears.

And then there is that Paddington pest, who revels in mouthing that miserable lie about the Socialists of Great Britain who hibernate during the winter to blossom forth with the flowers in May. There will be no plausible excuse after this— he will know where to find us in future, when he can present a case against us without resorting to dirty innuendoes and lying misrepresentation.

We are enjoying large audiences at Kilburn, and the prospects of forming a branch are promising. The wiseacres of Anti Socialists are in attendance twice a week when sober, and they regale their dupes with the ancient wheezes about us, which occasionally make them grin, but never prompt an intelligent question.

To get the workers to think and act is our business, not theirs, and in making this raid upon the preserves of these agents of reaction and confusion we shall ruthlessly expose and condemn them.

The local B.S.P. members boom the “Daily Herald,” advocate Syndicalism, and consciously do everything to frustrate the workers in realising what Socialism is and what it implies. For the workers to support such frauds as those is tantamount to committing suicide. We counsel them to ignore with contempt such a treacherous party. Have nothing to do with them! Attend our meetings, give an attentive hearing to our speakers and question them if need be.

We don't ask you to take for granted what we say just because we say it. We implore you to stop and think — stop and consider what your position in modern society represents. Reflect upon the value life has for you under the present hellish conditions! Listen to the Socialist Party’s propaganda and ponder over it. Procure our literature, the finest obtainable, and read it up, because men and women must be educated in order that they may be free.

Then, having achieved education, organise on class lines for the conquest of political power, making for the overthrow of slavery and bringing about the birth of the Society of the future.

Ben Carthurs.

Cooking the Books: The Magic Money Tree (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the leaders' debate on BBC1 on 31 May, the Tory substitute, Amber Rudd, kept on accusing the Labour Party of relying on a 'Magic Money Tree' to conjure up the money to finance their election promises. She was repeating a Tory mantra designed to get people to believe that Labour's attractive reforms were impossible as there was no money there to pay for them.

In fact, there is plenty of money there, in the form of accumulated profits which, in theory, a government could tax or borrow. It's just that the Tories are against this as they want to protect profits (or want to spend it on vital things for capitalism like weapons of war). But, more importantly, to overdo this would disrupt the workings of the capitalist economic system.

Capitalism is a system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit. Profits are what makes it go round as an economic system. It is driven by investment for profit. If the prospects for this are good, then there's expansion and a boom. If they are not, then there's an economic downturn; which happens quite normally from time to time as part of the way capitalism works, when a boom leads to overproduction in a key industry whose fall in investment then has a knock-on effect on other sectors.

This can also happen through government intervention. If the policy a government pursues threatens profits or makes conditions for profit-making worse, this will have an economic effect – investment and so production and employment will stall. Capital will go on strike.

Left-wing governments that have set out to increase popular consumption have experienced this many times and have attributed it to a 'bankers' ramp', a 'wall of money', or 'gnomes of Zurich'. But there is nothing they were able to do about it and in the end they had to capitulate to the economic forces of capitalism and give priority to profits and profit-making. Two examples within living memory would be the Wilson government of 1964 and Mitterrand in France in 1981. Both demonstrated the limits of reformism.

A Corbyn government would have come up against these forces too and failed, not because the money wouldn't have been there, but because it can't be used to improve people's life at the expense of profitable investment. Profits are the forbidden fruit on the Money Tree – one reason why it makes more sense to end the whole capitalist system rather than try to make it work in a way it just cannot.

In one sense it's capitalism that is a Magic Money Tree – for the capitalists. They invest money in production – buy premises, machinery, materials, hire workers – and sell what it produces, and end up with more money than they started with. Magic. But, like all magic, it's an illusion. What happens away from appearances is that the workers they employ produce goods of a greater value than what they are paid as wages. It is this surplus value that is the source of profits and, further down the line, of the interest of bankers, the ground rents of landlords, and what governments spend. To stop this workers need to take an axe to the root rather than merely trying to get back some of the fruit.

The Economics of Housing (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The worker who cannot get a house, or has to put up with overcrowding, or who struggles for years with payments on a mortgage, will ask why something is not done about it. He may be surprised, though not helped, to be told that a great many people for a long time have been vainly busy with the problem.

Since 1851, when the first Housing Act was passed by Parliament, there have been nearly forty governments, Liberal, Tory and Labour, and every one of them has been pledged in some way or other to deal with the housing problem. Many fact-finding inquiries have been made by government departments, Royal Commissions or private organizations; hundreds of books and reports have been issued; and Lord Shaftesbury, who sponsored the 1851 Act, has been followed by a long line of well intentioned social reformers who, on humanitarian or other grounds, sought the abolition of slums and overcrowding or tried to keep rents down. One Royal Commission on Housing, 1885, had as a member the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

Yet after all this time the housing problem has not been solved and it shows no sign of being solved now. What is more, it never has been solved at any time in the past century: there was never a time when people could look round and say that the things had at last been done.

The problem has been there all the time, though to succeeding generations it has seemed to take on different forms. At present it is the overall shortage of decent accommodation which makes the sufferers think how much better it would be if there were so many houses that you could see in every street “ House for Sale ” or “ To let” signs. But that is just what people did see earlier in the century.

In 1911, in England and Wales, there were over 400,000 uninhabited houses, with landlords looking in vain for tenants or buyers, yet at the same time there were another 400,000 houses officially described as “overcrowded.” Rents were much lower then than now, but so were wages, and the tenants of the overcrowded houses could not afford to move into the “empties." Anyone who imagines that housing problems started with World War I, or anyone who blames overcrowding on immigrants, should note that date, 1911. It was before World War I and was at a time when hundreds of thousands of people were leaving this country every year to settle in America and what were then British Colonies. The flow of immigration was out, not in.

The reason the housing problem has never been solved is that it is not really a housing problem at all but part of another and larger problem. The nature of this problem is indicated by the names of some of the housing Acts, names such as “Housing of the Working Classes Act,” “Artisans Dwellings Act "—but whoever heard of an Act for the housing of landed aristocrats or one for millionaires and company directors?

In the capitalist world we live in, the making of profit is the driving force behind production, and the employing class to whom the profits flow therefore have a continuing interest in keeping wages down. But they also have an interest in the health and efficiency of the workers they employ. In the nineteenth century, governments and employers were alarmed at the effects on health, physique and working efficiency of slums and overcrowding, but they were and are also concerned about its cost. So all the measures to improve housing or to reduce rents by subsidies or rent restriction have had the wages situation in mind.

When a Tory minister in a coalition government started rent control in 1915 it was because the rise of rents when building stopped during the war was causing violent discontent, and workers were pushing for higher wages. Rents were restricted (at the expense of the landlords) in order to help keep wages down. The same thing happened in other countries, and it. was shown by an International Labour Office inquiry into the effect of rent control in some continental countries in 1925 that the low rents had primarily benefited the employers.

In 1956 when the Tory government announced its intention to lift rent control on many houses the spokesmen for the Labour Opposition attacked it on the ground that the raising of rents would provoke determined and successful pressure by the workers for higher wages. This is indeed what happened. The year 1957 was a peak year for strikes. Wages went up by more than the average rise of the cost of living, and the addition to the total wage bill of the employers in fact exceeded the increase in rent gained by the landlords.

The employers had never minded the landlords being squeezed by rent control in the first place, but it became evident in the course of years that restricted rents and low profits for landlords had as one of their consequences the deterioration of housing and the creation of more near-slums. All three of the big political parties recognised this, though the remedies they offered were different. While the Tories imagined (wrongly) that decontrol would bring into the market spare accommodation where tenants were clinging to controlled houses larger than they needed and that this would prevent big increases of rents and house prices, and the Liberals slated them for not having done it sooner, the Labour Party proposed allowing some increase of rents conditional on improved maintenance. They linked this with the retention or reintroduction of control allied with the policy of wage restraint, as under the last Labour Government.

None of the three parties claimed in 1956 that the existing housing policies had been successful and should be left as they were. For one thing, with an acute shortage, control was to a large extent unenforceable: a writer in The Times (17.6.61) estimated that more than half a million houses that were supposed to be controlled were let at illegally high rents. And, in face of the facts, nobody claims that the housing problem has been solved after a hundred years of solutions. Nor will it be as long as capitalism lasts. Only when ALL production is carried on solely for use, by and in the interest of the whole community, will the production of houses be brought into line with human need.

Edgar Hardcastle