Between the Lines: Return to EastEnders (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Return to EastEnders

The piece in this column in the March issue on the BBC’s EastEnders provoked a mixed response from readers. Michelle Howard, of London, protested:

  I wish to comment on Steve Coleman’s review of the TV series EastEnders in which he describes the characters as, amongst other things, “unlovable, mindless lowlives” and “working class trash”.
 Using the “self-fulfilling prophecy" theory, he argues that viewers “internalize these ‘negative’ images as portrayed in EastEnders" and actually become “detestable specimens of the worst in humanity".
  I meet many, many people who are similar in personality and character to some of the “EastEnders” and, far from being the scum of the earth, are warm likeable and intelligent human beings. They may not be University-educated but that does not make them stupid. The essence of EastEnders is surely about human relationships and the kind of problems that can arise in everyday living.
 Whilst I feel that the programme romanticizes working-class life in the sense that we see a community where isolation is impossible and mutual support in abundance, I feel that it has handled a number of topical issues in a very sensitive and educational way (Cathy’s rape, Mark's HIV).
  I have shown the review to four friends (all Marxists) and they also find it patronizing. Can we have an explanation?

Joe Kenyon of Barnsley, on the other hand, asked if he can reproduce it in the newsletter he prepares for the Claimants and Unemployed Workers Union:

  The Between the Lines article by Steve Coleman was very, very apt and most interesting. It echoed my constant criticism of the East Enders. Indeed in our house we often refer to the EastEnders as "What a Rotten Lot". We sing it along with the signature tune. I was wondering if Steve Coleman would let me use it, with a few more expletives added, in a future newsletter which I am preparing (Of course you can use it—anyone can— but don't forget to say where it came from—Editors).

Please send in more letters like these: the TV column seeks to arouse heated debate. Needless to say. whether or not you are a socialist is not determined by your view of EastEnders: being a socialist means an active commitment to the establishment of a global society where resources are owned in common, controlled democratically and there is production solely for use. Whether you think that the Mitchell Brothers or Pat Butcher are “warm, likeable and intelligent human beings” is secondary.

It is secondary, but not irrelevant to how you see the world. Most novels published in the last century either ignored reference to the working class, lest the presence of the majority disturb the prettified imagery of the free and wealthy “characters” or it depicted workers as being somewhat slow-witted, untrustworthy and mob-like. In many respects the soap opera is the much more popular contemporary successor to the novel. We know that soaps have a huge influence upon viewers by offering a picture of reality to serve as an image of what living in this society is really like.

Some American soaps repeated the old novelists’ pattern of completely ignoring the working class. For example, Dallas relegated the wage slaves to voiceless Mexican servants, while the "real characters” (mainly oil millionaires, billionnaires and their lovers) dominated the action. In Britain there has been more of a tendency to try to depict the workers in soap operas. Now, there is no doubt much about workers in EastEnders which you would find amongst any group of workers in any area.

If Michelle Howard really knows people like that and really likes them, good for her. The present writer would rather sit in a cold bath with copy of the telephone directory than have to spend a social evening with a bunch of any three of the detestable characters of Albert Square.

The assumption of the people who produce EastEnders is that the working class are, as Joe Kenyon amusingly suggests, a pretty rotten lot. In the idealised world of Albert Square there is a mean mindedness to life; nobody ever does anyone much of a favour unless there's something in it for them: every expression of affection can usually be expected to conceal dishonesty and corruption; in discussions, the politics of the fascistic gut feeling is rarely far beneath the surface.

That is a very patronising image of the working class. It is one which leaves this viewer feeling that there is no coincidence in the fact that workers who read, workers who play musical instruments for pleasure, workers who attend serious political meetings and workers who care and share with one another are so conspicuously missing from EastEnders. It is as if the programme producers are of the view that mere prolies would never do those sort of things.

So. the argument with EastEnders is about what reality is actually like—and what was argued in this column two months ago was (a) that workers are not as one-dimensionally brutish as EastEnders shows them to be, and (b) the depiction of our class in this way on their media is no coincidence, but a political choice, even if an unintended one.

Any more views?

Steve Coleman

Sting in the Tail: A dog’s life (1993)

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

A dog’s life

Points of View (BBC1, 26 March) dealt with a TV story about an unemployed man and his family in Barrow who were struggling to survive on state benefits. After paying the bills they were left with about £20 to feed themselves.

The man had said that they couldn't afford to feed their pet dog so it might have to be put down. The viewer reaction to this was amazing. The BBC was inundated with letters from people who offered to send food for the mutt or even provide an allowance to feed it!

“Tragically”, said Anne Robinson the presenter, no one offered the man a job. Of course the real tragedy is that people are prepared to accept a society which, even though it can provide an abundance of food, still condemns other people to feed themselves on the princely sum of £20 a week.

It’s official

After the fiasco of last October's Black Wednesday, chancellor Norman Lamont appointed seven of Britain's most notable economists, ranging from monetarist diehard to Keynesian blowhard, to give the government the benefit of their collective wisdom on the economy.

The press quickly dubbed them “the seven wise men" and they had their first get-together in February. Now one of them, Professor Tim Congdon, has given his verdict on the other six:

  It turned out that none of the other members of the panel had any clear notion of how the quantity of money affects economic activity and the price level (Guardian, 9 March).

The Prof waded into his fellow panellists and, according to the Guardian, concluded that “they did not have a clue about how the economy really worked".

Socialists are forever pointing out how little the bourgeois economists know about the capitalist system they so admire, but could we have put it more brutally than has one of their own number?

The money go-round

The budget's reduction of tax credit on company dividends could mean that 70 percent of shareholders can look forward to smaller dividends. This immediately caused share prices to fall by £5 billion while government fixed-interest bonds suddenly became more popular with investors.

Switching funds around to get that little bit extra is something investors, especially the big institutions such as pension funds, must constantly do. During the Gulf War vast numbers of shares were sold to buy gold, the old stand-by in troubled times, but when the war ended investors “sold huge quantities of gold yesterday to raise the cash needed to buy into the booming stock market" (Guardian, 18 January 1992).

When interest rates were sky-high in the early 1990s investors moved funds into bank deposits which were bringing them 15 percent, but once rates fell then those deposits were switched back into shares and this has helped raise share prices to record levels.

And so it goes on, with capital moving endlessly between shares, gold, banks, bonds, etc, and back again in the restless search for the highest possible return.

Happy Endings

Charles Dickens was forced by public opinion to change the ending of Great Expectations. Many years later Hollywood film makers learned the same lesson. Never mind the plot's progression, give 'em a happy ending. People like happy endings? How about this scenario then?

For almost 400 years the working class have been exploited. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and even worse our daughters and sons have lived in chains. Frightened and poor we have done as we were bid.

But change comes. The working class grows up. It learns of its great potential power. It organises and it abolishes the wages system. It brings about a new system of society based on common ownership.

Hey, Steven Spielberg, we'll give you the film rights for nothing!

Just in case

ICI has won the contract to re-cycle or destroy US Army surplus explosives held in one of the world's biggest munition dumps.

This is a real big deal. This INAAP—Indiana Army Ammunition Plant—is an 11,000 acre site containing 1,400 buildings. 1S5 miles of roads and 80 miles of railroad track.

It is always good to see the end of arms build-ups, but alas the story is not one of undiminished joy. According to the Independent on Sunday (21 March):

   The company gets to use a state-of-the-art. well maintained factory. In return, it will employ local people and keep the production lines warm—just in case the previous occupant needs to make a sudden return.

With memories of Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, the US Army are merely putting INAAP in the back burner for future use.

Rejoice?

Mrs Thatcher's famous Downing Street remark at the end of the Falkland Islands conflict of “rejoice” seems even more inappropriate with the news that Scotland Yard are to investigate the claim that British soldiers shot Argentine prisoners.

Commenting on this, the Independent (27 March) reported:

  Investigations of war crimes perpetrated by the victors in a conflict are rare. “The victors can usually shut this kind of thing up", said a Ministry of Defence official. It was the publication in 1991 of Lance-Corporal Vincent Bromley's book, Excursion In Hell, with its account of the shooting of Argentine prisoners by British soldiers, that made these alleged crimes an exception.

Socialists are opposed to all capitalism's wars. To us they are all crimes. We will do our rejoicing when we get rid of capitalism.

Editorial: The Need is Socialism (1979)

Editorial from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904—seventy-five years ago this month. Any organisation which has lasted that long must be tempted to look back and congratulate itself simply on the fact of its own survival.

We have seen two world wars, prolonged international slumps, the rise of fearsome dictatorships and innumerable smaller crises, economic and political. Progress in political understanding has been hampered by the distortions of Labour government in this country and by the misnaming of the Russian dictatorship as socialist. The intensity of working class exploitation has been increased by developments which, in a sane society, could only be for human benefit. The very existence of human life is threatened now by the stockpiles of destruction which the power blocs of capitalism keep at the ready.

It has not been, then, a happy seventy-five years but yes, we have survived. And by survival we mean as a socialist party; we have kept the socialist case extant and active. Whatever minor mistakes we have made, the basic validity of the case for socialism has not been threatened by anything that has happened during our lifetime. Indeed, the opposite has been true; the need is for socialism now. as it was in 1904.

For socialists, then, this might be a time for self-congratulation, for complacently reviewing our achievements as if that is enough. But capitalism—an impossible, menacing turmoil of a society—remains and its abolition is urgent. Working for socialism is vital and at this time of our seventy-fifth anniversary we reaffirm our resolve to carry this on.

The socialist movement offers something unique. We alone analyse the events of capitalism from a consistent, Marxist standpoint. We alone are not misled by promises of reform of easing one social ailment here, another there, at the cost of capitalism’s continuation. Experience teaches us that this is futile. So we shall continue to stand, alone, for the only effective way of dealing with those ailments—the establishment of socialism.

But capitalism can move fast. Since the war we have seen developments in travel, communication and production which could scarcely have been dreamed of in 1904. Technical problems only recently regarded as insoluble have been solved. Recent progress in the field of micro-processors makes the computers of twenty years ago, then considered the ultimate in ingenuity, seem rudimentary and clumsy. And we are still only just beginning to scratch the surface of knowledge. The socialist movement alone consistently relates such developments to the realities of capitalist society. As long as capitalism endures, all such progress will be allowed only as it answers the demand for profitable production. Only socialism will truly set free the people’s talents to build an abundant world of free access to wealth.

Socialism will bring the uniting of the human race. Capitalism divides its peoples—in real terms on the basis of their class and in the mythology of the patriots and the racists on the basis of their country or their physical characteristics. These latter divisions, unscientific as they are, are the roots of much violence. The Socialist Party stresses the essential unity of the majority of the world’s people, to give mutual support during the class struggle of capitalism and-more importantly—in the struggle to end class society and replace it with the classless society of socialism.

This struggle is long and hard and, as the socialist movement is at present so small, lonely. It might seem easier to be diverted into some vote-catching gimmick but in the long run this would make our work harder still. It would signal the end of the socialist movement and leave us with the task of rebuilding. Our weapons in this struggle are words—debate, argument, comparisons, knowledge—and these we must bring to bear with all the power at our disposal.

So accuracy, clarity, cogency are vital to our work. This has been our pride; we do not indulge in smears, or in a distortion of what our opponents say—they condemn themselves out of their own mouths. Socialists tirelessly put our case, in debate, discussion, in speaking and writing. We do this not just to win our point but also to test the validity of what we are saying—and thus the case for socialism has been proven.

We are confident that this will continue. Socialism has been searchingly tested by reality and it has stood the test. There can be no doubt that a new society based upon common ownership is the only way to end the problems of modern society. Our task, seventy-five years old, is to keep that case alive, to sharpen our propaganda and to make our party into an ever more dynamic force for socialism.

Changes in the political scene (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1925, Joseph Clayton, in his Rise and Decline of Socialism wrote that “The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was the Marx, the whole Marx and nothing but Marx . . . never had any luck.” His single test for all political parties was ‘how many members have they?’ If their membership was small he wasn’t interested. Indeed he admitted, in correspondence, that he had not even troubled to find out if the SPGB and the fading Social Democratic Federation were still in existence. So he did not have to examine the proposition that only socialism will solve the problems of the working class, or attempt to show that the big membership parties could either solve the problems within capitalism or could establish socialism.

But the scene constantly changes. Parties, both the openly capitalist ones and those claiming to have a different and quicker policy for achieving socialism, rise and decline and new party names—if not new policies—come along.

During the 19th Century and up to 1914 power was in the hands of Liberals and Tories alternately with, towards the end, the Liberals being supported in Parliament by their allies the growing Labour party. The last Liberal victory was in 1910. Then their decline set in and after World War 1 the Liberal vote at general elections never reached that of the Labour party. By 1951 it was only about 2½ per cent. Since then, owing to voters’ dissatisfaction with Labour and Tory governments, it climbed to 18 per cent in 1974 but fell back to 13.8 per cent in 1979.

Among the smaller parties claiming to be socialist the first “success” as measured by Mr Clayton, went to the Social Democratic Federation, which in 1892 claimed 7,400 members. Thereafter, with various changes of name, regroupings, and the loss of many members to the Labour party in 1920, it faded away and disappeared in 1939. Its first rivals had been the Fabian Society which still exists, though with diminished influence on the Labour party, and the Independent Labour Party, the greatest “success” of all. In 1925 it had 50,000 members, and at the general election in 1929 more than 200 Labour MPs were members of the ILP. But as the Labour party attracted Liberal voters, and many Liberal politicians joined its ranks, it had no further use for the ILP, which broke away and ceased to count. It finally wound up in 1975, telling its members to join the Labour party.

Next on the scene was the Communist Party of Great Britain. It followed the unsuccessful policy of street fighting, armed revolt and “heavy civil war”. Now it has become an ordinary reformist political party, its earlier policies being taken over by several new ‘left-wing’ organisations.

The Labour party too has changed. In its early days, though some of its leaders like Phillip Snowden tried to play it down in order not to offend the Liberals, it represented its prime aim as the abolition of capitalism and establishment of socialism. In debates, the Labour speakers would usually declare their full acceptance of socialism as defined by the SPGB, and maintain that the difference was only about how to get socialism. As late as 1925 Attlee, who became Labour Prime Minister in 1945, declared that the Labour party believed “in the abolition of classes and in an equalitarian society”. (The Will and the Way to Socialism). There were to be no rich and no poor, no cramped dwellings and no luxury mansions. All were to be ‘equal’. It is ironic in view of the efforts of his own, and succeeding, Labour governments to hold down wages that, according to Attlee, a Labour government would seek to achieve the equalising process by a policy of “wage increases”. In 1945 the Labour party election programme declared “The Labour Party is a socialist party, and proud of it”. Nowadays, in spite of some feeble efforts of Callaghan and Michael Foot during the recent campaign to resuscitate the “socialist” appeal for the benefit of the “faithful”, Labour Party propaganda and policies are openly directed to proving that the Labour party is better at handling capitalism’s problems than is the Tory Party. In a recent interview Callaghan said

  Socialism has always been a matter of controversy in the Labour Party and there are millions of Labour Party supporters who aren’t socialists and never have been.

(Observer 3 December 1978) 

It was a different story when the Labour Party took office in 1929. The Labour Daily Herald (1 June 1929) said

  This great appeal to the public has shown that socialism has no terrors for millions of men and women in this country of all classes and callings. The magnificent results we record today are an earnest that at no very distant date the banners of socialism will be carried to that final victory of which the present triumph is only a prelude.

So the Socialist Party of Great Britain has still, by Clayton’s standard, “never had any luck”, but the parties which said they knew how to humanise capitalism have failed, and the parties which thought they had discovered short cuts to socialism have come and gone and the socialist proposition still holds the field.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: After the election (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

How and why is it that the majority of the people are worse off than their employers—the few? Mainly because the workers do not realise that their vote plays so important a part in influencing their conditions of life. Let us remember that whatever government has been in power its influence has been used, for instance, in deciding industrial disputes, even to the extent of using the police, soldiers etc; and don’t forget that those who have to work for a living are those who have the majority of votes and are themselves responsible for having elected the governments which have used their power against the workers . . . But if the majority have no decided views or are divided, the capitalist minority will go on as now, turning the world in the way which is very comfortable for them, but not for us. We tell you the way out, and we are sure that if you think about it you will sooner or later agree with us. You have tried Conservative, Liberal and Labour. We ask you to try socialism instead.

(From an article “To wives, mothers and others” by Hilda McClatchie, Socialist Standard June 1929)

Small wall of China (1979)

Democracy Wall

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the downfall of the “Gang of Four”, the Chinese ruling class have embarked on a policy of rapid modernisation and industrialisation. The extent of their plans can be seen in some details from the Ten-Year Plan for 1976-85, which was formulated by the State Council in 1975 and endorsed by the National People’s Congress in March 1978. It is envisaged that between 1978 and 1985 the gross investment budgeted for capital construction will be equal to that for the entire period 1950-78. By 1985 it is intended that ten new iron and steel complexes, ten oil and gas fields and thirty power stations, among many other undertakings, will have been constructed. The gross value of agricultural output is supposed to increase by four to five per cent per annum, and of industrial output by over ten per cent (figures taken from Chairman Hua Guofeng’s speech to the Fifth National People's Congress).

To achieve all this will require vast resources, which will come from two sources: loans to the order of hundreds of millions of pounds from overseas banks to finance purchases of goods and technology, and the unpaid labour of the working class. The amount of the latter is to be increased by urging China’s workers to work harder and stifle any complaints, largely by dangling the carrot of piece-wages before them (see the Socialist Standard, December 1978). The first method seems to have been pretty successful, since banks are only too keen to lend money when they know their customer won’t do a moonlight flit and is likely to return cap in hand again and again. But the second method has run into problems.

At the same time as calling on the workers to put their backs into it, and with a sense of timing such as to make Jim Callaghan look like a political genius, it was announced that members of the so-called “national bourgeoisie”; the “patriotic industrialists and businessmen”, would have money and property which was confiscated during the Cultural Revolution returned to them. This is said to be because such people are experienced in the ways of the world (the capitalist world) and can help in China’s dealings with other countries. It is also pointed out that the earlier confiscations were illegal, and indeed according to the constitution “The state protects the right of citizens to own lawfully-earned income”. The beneficiaries of the repayments are former private capitalists whose property was nationalised in the 1950s in return for interest-bearing government bonds. Now they are having cash and personal possessions returned to them. The existence of privilege and inequality is thus flaunted and endorsed by the government, while the other side of the coin is seen in the recent ruling that families with more than two children will suffer cuts in their income. For instance, workers who produce a third child will have five per cent of their wages deducted for welfare expenses a kind of reverse family allowance which not even an English Tory would dare to propose.

Cynical Treatment
There are signs, however, that not all of China’s workers are prepared to accept this cynical treatment. For over the last few months there has been a remarkable upsurge of dissident activity, much of it centred on the “Democracy Wall” along Peking’s main street. It seems possible to discern three main tendencies within this activity. One, the most active in the production of wall posters, is the demand for “human rights”, specifically for freedom of speech. One poster asked President Carter to turn his attention to the state of human rights in China, on the grounds that China’s record in this field does not compare favourably with other countries.

There have also been at least two demonstrations for food and the “right to work”. One, in mid-January, was held outside Zhongnanhai, the compound in central Peking where the top rulers live. A fortnight later, as thirty thousand officials gathered at the Great Mall of the People to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a hundred and fifty peasants stood outside with banners proclaiming “We want to eat” and “We want clothes”; the demonstrators were dispersed, and an organiser arrested.

Lastly, there have been protests by young people against their being assigned to jobs in distant cities or deep in the countryside. This practice (which obviates urban unemployment) has long been unpopular among those affected by it, and Chinese newspapers have in the past given prominence to urban youths living in the countryside who have married local commune-members and decided to settle there permanently. In early February, Shanghai youths staged sit-ins along railway tracks and protested outside the offices of the city’s employment bureau. Others have returned without authorisation to their home cities, where they have turned to begging and theft in order to live without the ration coupons necessary for the purchase of rice and cotton clothing.

Infringement
The government’s reaction to these protests has been typical of dictatorships everywhere. Critics have been arrested, the area available for wall posters has been progressively reduced, and anti-government posters have been speedily removed. In Shanghai new by-laws were passed restricting where posters could be placed; demonstrators protested that this was an infringement of their democratic rights, only to be told that the purpose was simply to reduce congestion in the streets. Nevertheless, the fact that protest still continues strongly suggests that the government feels itself unable to stamp down on it completely—presumably because the dissidents, however few they are in number, are too strong for this to be successful.

It is not reported that any of the protestors have appealed to the Chinese Constitution (adopted at the Congress mentioned earlier) in defence of their freedom to protest, though they may well have. Article 45 states: “Citizens enjoy freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration and the freedom to strike”. Mind you, as well as enjoying such marvellous freedoms, citizens also have certain duties, for instance they “must support the leadership of the Communist Party of China” (Article 56).

The provisions of Article 45 are of course a complete dead letter. There are no such freedoms in China for any but the tiny minority of the country’s ruling class: the newspapers and other media are entirely government-controlled, and the arrests of demonstrators show that the other freedoms mentioned are inapplicable in practice. Strikes do occur, but not often, and in any case can be declared unconstitutional under Article 8, according to which no person may “disrupt the economic order of society”. The Chinese case shows clearly the limitations of paper rights and freedoms as enshrined in constitutions.

This does not however mean that the de facto ability to organise and discuss under capitalism is of no value to the working class. Without political democracy in this sense there is no possibility of establishing socialism. The events in China are evidence that at least some workers there have come to realise the necessity of achieving such freedoms and are prepared to run the considerable risks involved in acting on that realisation. It is tragic that their protests should be mixed up with nonsense about “human rights” and appeals to leaders of other capitalist countries. But at least some Chinese workers are well aware of the undemocratic nature of the society they live in, and others are not prepared just to accept their poverty.

Dissident Activity

It must be acknowledged that current dissident activity in China (it makes no sense as yet to speak of a dissident movement) is on a very low level. After all, ninety-eight per cent of the population do not live in Peking or Shanghai, and only a fraction of the population even of these cities are involved, though there may well be more going on than can be discerned from this distance (it is unlikely that the Western media will devote the same kind and degree of attention to Chinese dissidents as they do to their Russian counterparts as long as Western capitalism feels its interests to be served by trade and other close links with China). Moreover there is no indication that the current crop of protesters have managed to recognise the state capitalist nature of the society they live in, unlike many Russian dissidents and the Sheng-wu-lian group who flourished briefly in China during the Cultural Revolution.

In spite of the confused nature of their ideas and aims, the Chinese dissidents are an inevitable product of a class-divided society. We look forward to the day when socialist posters appear on the streets of Peking and the establishment of a socialist party is possible in China.

Paul Bennett

Letter From Europe: Congress of French reformists (1979)

French Socialist Party in session, Metz 1979. Mitterrand b/r.

The Letter From Europe Column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Congress of the so-called Socialist Party (PS) in France took place in Metz the week before Easter. It was marked by preliminary manoeuvrings for the position of the Party’s candidate for the 1981 Presidential elections. The two contenders were the present leader, Francois Mitterrand, a recycled wheeler-dealer politician from the old IVth Republic (1946-58) now posing as a socialist, and Michel Rocard, an ambitious technocrat who was once leader of the left wing breakaway “Parti socialiste unifie” (PSU).

Both have been Presidential candidates before. Mitterrand in 1965 and 1974 (when he missed by only 1 per cent beating the present President, Giscard d’Estaing). Rocard in 1969 when he was the candidate of the PSU, standing against the official candidate of the PS, which he did not rejoin till 1974.

The real issue before the Congress was not the choice of a Presidential candidate although this was at the back of the delegates’ minds. In France the conferences of trade unions and left wing political parties do not have before them, as in Britain, a list of resolutions to be voted on one by one. Instead they have to vote on rival global strategies, long wordy statements called “motions”, presented by “currents” within the organisation. For the PS congress at Metz seven such currents had been formed to propose a motion, only four of which were significant: apart from those of Mitterrand and Rocard, that of Pierre Mauroy, mayor of Lille and boss of the PS machine in the North of France, and that presented by CERES (“Centre d’etudes, de recherche et d’education socialistes”) which regards itself as the left wing of the PS.

Reversal of Alliances
In the end, the Mitterrand motion obtained 47 per cent of the votes of delegates, Rocard’s 21 per cent, Mauroy’s 17 per cent and CERES’ 15 per cent. These four currents will be represented proportionally on the Party’s management committee and executive bureau but at the start only Mitterrand’s supporters were on the National Secretariat which runs the day-to-day affairs of the Party. A few weeks after the Congress representatives of CERES were admitted to the Secretariat so that the Party is now run by a Mitterrand-CERES alliance. Since, for the previous four years, the Party had been run by a Mitterrand-Rocard-Mauroy alliance, with only CERES excluded, this reversal of alliances is regarded as a turn to the left by the PS.

But this all depends on what you mean by “left”. It is a virtually meaningless term that is best avoided, a position which is reinforced from an examination of CERES’ claim to be left wing. For CERES (like the so-called Communist Party in France) is a staunch defender of French national independence, opposing the Common Market as an American-backed threat to this independence. Again like PCF, it wants to see established in France a nationalist state capitalist regime, cut off from the rest of the world market. Policies which, before the last war, would have been regarded as “right wing” and even fascist. In addition, many members of CERES are practising Catholics even though they claim to be Marxists (no wonder Marx once said that he wasn’t a Marxist!).

Mitterrand too is a Catholic and this illustrates a change that has come over the PS since it was reorganised on a new basis in 1971. Up until 1969, it has been known as the SFIO or “French Section of the Workers’ International”, a name it gave itself when it was founded as a uniting of rival groups in 1905 under the auspices of the Second International with the open reformist and anti-Marxist Jean Jaures as leader. In 1920 most of its members voted to affiliate the Party to the Comintern and to become the Communist Party; the minority led by Leon Blum broke away reviving the old name of SFIO. By the 1930s, the SFIO had grown bigger than the PC and it was Blum who became Prime Minister of the Popular Front government in 1936. During and after the war it was the PC that emerged as what the trotskyites would call “the party of the working class” or the party that most factory workers and trade unionists supported.

The SFIO was a militant anti-clerical party—much more so than the PC—whose strength and support was drawn from traditionally Republican and Radical areas. For a reformist party, a party seeking the support of as many workers as possible on a programme of reforms, this was a handicap since it thereby cut itself off from half its potential supporters: the Catholic-minded workers. Overcoming this handicap, which enabled the Party to penetrate traditionally Catholic areas in the West and East of France, is the main reason for the success of the new style PS under Mitterrand’s leadership.

Rivalry
The PS has now once again overtaken the PC as the main left wing party in France. Despite an often acrimonious rivalry, the PS and PC are both committed to the strategy of the “union of the left”; in other words, an electoral alliance and coalition government (together with a much smaller group of breakaway Radicals who call themselves “Left Radicals”). The closeness of this alliance was one of the issues which divided Mitterrand and Rocard, with Rocard urging that the PS should take a more independent line. Another issue between these two currents was the degree of central State ownership and control of the economy. Expressed in terms of arguments that have gone on in Eastern Europe, Mitterand can be said to be for a more or less centralised State capitalism while Rocard favours so-called “market socialism” and workers’ councils.

In actual fact these differences are not important since, if the PS ever comes to power, it would be faced not with the problem of putting into practice some airy principles it might have adopted but with the problem of running capitalism. It would be capitalism that would dictate the priorities, just as it has done to the various Labour governments in Britain and to the various Social Democratic governments in the other countries of Europe.

No Experience
The PS has never had experience of trying to govern capitalism. though some of its individual leaders have including Mitterrand himself. But that was before he claimed to be a socialist and his record then was not particularly “left wing”: it was he who as Minister of the Interior banned a number of PC and trade union marches in Paris in 1954 and 1955 and it was he who as Minister of Justice signed the death warrant in 1957 of a member of the PC in Algeria. Because it has not had this experience the PS has many more illusions than similar reformist parties in other countries about what it thinks it will be able to do if it comes to power. Thus the Mitterrand motion, which obtained the most votes at the Metz Congress, declares:

  The object of the PS is not to modernise or to moderate capitalism but is to replace it with Socialism.

Such language has not been used by the Labour Party in Britain since 1945, even if by “socialism” is only meant “state capitalism”. The PS missed a chance of coming to power last year when it failed to win the March general election. Its next chance won’t come till 1981 when either Mitterrand or Rocard will be put up to challenge Giscard d’Estaing, who will be seeking a further seven-year term as President. But if it does come to power in 1981 it will be to try to modernise and moderate capitalism. Not having (not even having sought) a mandate for socialism, it will have no alternative but to continue capitalism. But capitalism can only be run in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits, which any PS or PS-PC coalition government in France would be sooner or later forced to recognise and put into practice.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)

Information Bank (1979)

Party News from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of the Socialist Standard will be interested to know that an Information Bank has been started by a number of party members. Its purpose will be to make available factual information in a concise form for propaganda activity. Volunteers are needed to monitor specialist journals and newspapers and to send cuttings or photocopied material to the various file “organisers”, who in turn will organise this information into an appropriate form and make it available on request.

Work has begun on five files:

1. WORLD OF ABUNDANCE (resources, capitalism's waste, technological possibilities, population)
2. HEALTH UNDER CAPITALISM
3. EDUCATION
4. SOCIALISM IN THE MEDIA (“Letters to the Editor" by socialists, articles on the SPGB and Companion Parties)
5. PARTY MATERIAL AND PUBLICATIONS (Party statements, leaflets, old Standards, pamphlets etc.)

Please contact J. Howell (Mid Surrey Group-see directory) or R. Cox (Haslemere contact) for further information or if you would like to make available any material for the Bank. Every bit of help to make this project a valuable and vital contribution to Party propaganda will be appreciated.

Accidental costs (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Accidents will happen" is an old saying. Though "zero risk" is impossible with any form of technology, capitalism's priorities—profits before people—make the production and distribution of wealth an unnecessary risky business. Many avoidable accidents happen and when they do attempts are made to keep the facts secret and to cover-up or whitewash the cause or extent of the disaster. Even where governments impose regulations, these are blithely ignored by profit-seeking entrepreneurs and state-owned enterprises alike

Road Rail and Air
Railways are relatively “safe”, yet in Yugoslavia a train crash killed 153 people because the driver and his mate both fell asleep, ‘‘overtired after working 300 hours in a month”. Cars are often unsafe, and manufacturers’ recalls of unsafe models for modification are hushed up.

In Yorkshire, five coach passengers were killed when the brakes failed on a hill: no maintenance had been done on the coach for three months! Such “accidents” are preventable.

Over San Diego, California, a Boeing 727 collided with a light aircraft and 151 people were killed. Among the factors involved was “foot-dragging” by the Federal Aviation Agency in not compelling the use of a cheap electronic collision-avoidance system on all planes. “The only thing that forces an FAA ruling is when enough people get killed”, said the president of the Airline Pilots Association. Another cause of air-crashes was apparent in the Zagreb mid-air collision between a Yugoslav charter plane and a British Airways flight, which killed 176 people. The Air Traffic Controllers were understaffed and overworked. That “accident” too was avoidable.

Occupational Hazards:
Simple precautions are often lacking, even when required by Government regulations. Sweeping rainwater off the roof of a modern six-storey office block, a workman fell 55 feet and was seriously injured. A government inspector declared: “the accident would not have happened if Premier House had been fitted with a guard rail”. A lawyer defending the contractors argued that “it put the matter into perspective to appreciate that Ronmac Services’ contract was worth about £60 and to put up a guard rail would cost over £2,000”. In industries like building and mining, occupational hazards are a dime a dozen, and accidents are seldom “news”.

Chemicals:
The TUC handbook Health and Safety at Work lists many dangerous chemicals, including mercury, cadmium, beryllium, lead, chromium and polyurethanes made from isocyanates. There is also risk from inhaling dust, the worst known effects being from blue asbestos, arsenic, beryllium and coal dust. In Islington, London, the area round a scrap metal works was found to be seriously polluted with cadmium. Cadmium accumulates in the kidneys and the amount inhaled daily in Islington was above the level known to cause kidney damage. Pollution from secondary metal plants is not normally monitored—“the problem was uncovered only by chance”—and apparently “there are no national safety standards for heavy metals in the atmosphere”. No protection for people can equal bigger profits for business.

Fire:
There is also a greater fire risk with new synthetic materials-polyurethane foam, foamed, polystyrene and other polymeric substances-used in the home, especially in upholstered furniture. These produce toxic fumes and smoke or create a rapid surface spread of flame. They are cheaper than wood, wool, leather or horsehair, just as paraffin heaters are cheaper than electricity in the working-class home. Lethal fires in workers’ homes are part and parcel of their wage-saving poverty.

Asbestos:
This has been known to be lethal for more than half a century. Yet in American schools where ceilings were cheaply built with asbestos from 1940-1973, levels of the material in the atmosphere are close to those near asbestos mines and “in some cases, exposure exceeded workplace maxima . . .  at one school, simply moving books about in one room raised the exposure level to 13.5 fibres per cubic centimetre, well above the US government’s 10 fibre limit for the workplace”. Asbestos increases the risk of lung-cancer, including, incurable mesothelioma.

In Australia, the Baryulgil asbestos mine destroys the health of its mainly Aboriginal workers: asbestos tailings are used by the local council on the roads, there is a pile of it in the school playground and vast quantities of the dust in the settlement—“and our children—well, ever since my kids were born, ever since they could walk, they’ve been playing in heaps of shivers (asbestos tailings) and coming in snow white, covered in dust”. Half the workers have died from chest and lung complaints, 90 per cent of the Aborigines have lung problems, and the oldest was only 50 when he died. The company, and the New South Wales Division of Occupational Health, and the Australian Health Commission have known and done nothing about Baryulgil for more than twenty years.

Seveso—A “Preventable Accident”:
Sometimes chemical processes go wrong. This happened on July 10 1976 at Seveso, where a cloud of TCDD (dioxin)—an extremely poisonous by-product of trichlorophenol production—was vented into the atmosphere. Accidents with trichlorophenol production had occurred previously, injuring and killing workers in the USA (1949), West Germany (1953), Britain (Coalite), Holland, France and Italy. One plant was dumped at the bottom of the sea, another down a disused coalmine. Contamination is for keeps. The TCDD poison is 500 times stronger than strychnine and curare, 10,000 times more so than sodium cyanide. It deforms foetuses and may cause cancer. It also causes chloracne, liver and kidney damage, heart failure, crippling muscle pains, and many “neurological and psychological disorders”. In spite of the known dangers, after the accident workers were allowed to work “as normal” in the plant for nearly a week. A week later the hospital and local authority were informed about the poison, and evacuation of the area was not ordered till August 2—more than three weeks after the accident.

“Seveso should never have happened”, concluded The Economist. Yet the plant was run in compliance with Italian government regulations in that area over 300 chemical plants were breaking the notoriously lax regulations. The Economist emphasised that “Other Sevesos could happen, other Minamatas (a Japanese fishing village poisoned by mercury), other PCBs (a chemical whose nasty effects were not recognised till twenty years after it had been in widespread use)”.

In Michigan USA, cattle were fed PBB flame retardant accidentally mixed — more than once—into feedstuff. Health damage to the population has been serious—90 per cent of the people of Michigan had the chemical in their bodies five years later. PBBs are “close chemical cousins” of PCBs which are now regarded as carcinogens. PCBs are very long-lived in the environment, “in 1968 over 1000 Japanese were poisoned by eating rice oil contaminated by PCBs. Infants-unborn at the time of the incident-were poisoned by absorbing PCBs from their mothers’ milk”.

Living On A Dump:

In the USA 30-40 million tons of dangerous waste is produced each year. There are at least one thousand dumps which are “a serious danger to human health” and many others where information is lacking. No registers are kept of former chemical dumps. And in August 1978 Love Canal, where houses and a primary school were built over tons of waste chemicals, was declared a disaster area. “People who walked in the pools of foul-smelling chemicals found their shoes burnt through, and dogs became sick and lame . . . Health inspectors found no less than 82 chemicals — 11 of them known to cause cancer in animals, and at least one a known human carcinogen.” Miscarriage rates were 50 per cent above average and birth deformities are common among the children.

Such land is cheap to build on. Where the working class is treated like garbage, their houses will be built on garbage, and their children will make mud-pies in garbage. They will pay the price with cancer, epilepsy, asthma, liver, kidney and bladder complaints, miscarriages, nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts-byproducts of the production of pesticides in an economic system which cares passionately about profits and treats working people as expendable. Capitalism kills—by carelessness. Avoidable accidents expose the capitalist system’s priority—profits before people.

Charmian Skelton

References

Road and rail—Sunday Times 13/4/75 and 20/4/75. Air-crashes—Sunday Times 1/10/78. Occupational—Woking News and Mail 10/4/75. Chemicals—New Scientist 1/3/79, 7/12/78. Asbestos—NS 11/1/79 and 29/3/79. Sevcso—The Economist 17/6/78. PBBs and PCBs—The Observer 15/10/78, NS 11/1/79. Living on a Dump—The Listener 11/1/79.

Next: oil and nuclear risks, secrecy, negligence.

On the beach (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone — that is, every City Editor, every investment analyst — loves a growth industry. It usually doesn’t matter what the growth is about; the firms which supplied the ovens and the gas to the Nazi concentration camps must have been a growth industry. What matters is growth — the vision of an ever-developing, ever-expanding and therefore, it is assumed, an ever more profitable business.

One of the great growth industries of recent times is the tourist trade; sometimes, as if it were a political theory, called tourism. Six per cent of total international trade is attributable to tourism — more than iron and steel and surpassed only by motor vehicles, chemicals and fuel oil. The World Tourism Organisation, who may be supposed to be not entirely impartial in the matter, claims, “Tourism is no longer a cottage industry . . . today [it] has developed into a major industry".

Britain, advertised as a place where the scenery varies from the simply pretty to the dramatic and where there are buildings dating back to the Roman occupation, is one of the world’s big tourist attractions. Last year 11.72 million tourists came here, to stare at the scenery, photograph the buildings and dazedly shell out their cash to the riotously charging barrow boys of London. During that same year, 12.86 million people travelled abroad from Britain. Those who came in here spent £857 million more than those who went out spent abroad a bias on the balance of payments such as to please any City Editor.

For a favourable balance of payments, like a growth industry, is everyone’s favourite. This (although there are arguments that even by the standards of capitalist accounting the advantages are often more apparent than real) is one of the inducements for the ‘developing’countries to build up a tourist trade. In these cases, the state takes a close interest in the trade; there is usually a Ministry of Tourism and some impressive government subsidies and investment as well as other help. Sometimes the capital for the development has other sources. One American travel firm planned to take over an entire African country, with “no economy, no nothing” and to “merchandise it . . .  so the entire country is run as a beautiful place’’. (The money was to come from Rothschilds.)

Lego
This drive to ravage some defenceless part of the world into a paradise for the tourist trade gives tourism a bad image. The industry has its apologists, whose efforts sometimes have a note of desperation:

  Anyone concerned with the motivation of travel has to realise first that he is reaching deep into one of the major conflicts of the human mind; a desire for sameness, the return to the womb, if you wish; conflicting with the motivation to reach out and discover the world. In a sublimated fashion, a trip is therefore a form of birth or rebirth. (Dr. Ernst Dichter, Address to the Department of Travel, Kashmir, October 1967.)

Rather closer to the reality of the balance sheet the trade says it aims to supply hopeful people, on their annual release from the job with a little money to spend, with the Four Esses — Sun, Sea, Sand. Sex. And in pursuit of the profits to be made from that, the tourist trade has invested millions into ships, aircraft, motor coaches, airports, roads, beaches. It has raised hotels which all appear as if they have been built from the same Lego set, where among the palms and the sunbrellas workers can lie roasting like fowls on the spit, hoping to take a sun tan back to the office.

Behind the illusions, tourism has had a dramatic, even drastic, effect on the social fabric of the places it has invaded. In 1955 Torremolinos was a tiny, poverty-stricken village on the south-east coast of Spain. Then the developers’ eye fell upon it and now the Lego is everywhere, the Thomas Cook brochure describes it as ". . . exuberant [with] all the essentials of a modern resort: bars, boutiques, restaurants, beer cellars, clubs, golf courses, yacht marinas . . . One observer has summed up this trend:

  Tourism . . . is no less an industry than steel manufacture and its introduction into Alpine valleys has been no less destructive of total population patterns and traditional culture than if each hotel had been a blast furnace. (The Geography of Recreation and Leisure, Cosgrove and Jackson.)

Pollution
This aspect is beginning to worry the tourist trade, and much of the writing on it is now concerned with a call for something called a Tourism Policy, by which is meant a controlled development of tourism. It also worries the ecology lobby. The summit of Mount Snowdon is literally being worn away by the millions of feet which trample over it. In the season, a city like London suffers exhaust fumes made even denser by the fleets of taxis, cars, buses, coaches needed to move the tourists from one box office to the next. Outside the city the big jets scream to and from the airport on their carpet of noise, a 707 at take-off generates the same sound level as all the world’s population shouting in unison — and this can happen every few minutes, nearly every hour of every day.

But for the present the pollution which it causes is a lesser worry for the tourist industry. Of more immediate concern, because it offers an imminent threat to profits, is the bogey of saturation. If too many people visit the same place and overwhelm the available facilities, they may have the kind of experience to persuade them not to buy that holiday again. London, which lies fourth in the league table of saturation, measured by tourist nights spent per 100 residents, is getting near that point. Moving around the city in the summer is difficult, almost impossible, as the visitors from abroad add their weight to the rush-hour miseries of the travelling workers. In Westminster Abbey the crush is so great that an admission charge has been imposed, and after paying to go in the visitors are channelled along roped-off routes with no waiting allowed to look at anything.

This illustrates a contradiction of tourism which (although it may not occur to the Ford worker inflicting his Spanish on some hapless English-speaking bartender on the Costa Brava) is typical of capitalist society. Tourism has grown from the pressures of industrial capitalism. It was the concentrations of urban life — factories, close-piled slums, relentless exploitation — which spawned the need to get away from it all as well as the faster and more efficient means of doing so.

It took some time for the workers to establish that a holiday is an essential part of the recreation of their labour power. As this need is now accepted, and as many workers now get three or even four weeks break each year, the tourist industry has grown to market that recreation. This can assume some startling forms but who cares, as long as it sells? So holiday camps marshall their millions into obedient queues and into nerve-wracking competitions to find the funniest face in the place. Package tours take care of everything except stomachs abruptly overfull of unusual food and booze. Jet planes pack in their economy passengers as tight as a bus, easing the discomforts with the plastic smile of a leg-weary hostess. Somewhere among all this gusty enjoyment, say the industry’s salesmen, batteries are recharged; the line at Ford’s flows freer for it.

So big business is interested in an efficient holiday industry and the tourist trade has answered this by itself becoming big business. It is becoming increasingly harder for the small firm to survive. The British hotel industry is dominated by companies like Trust House Forte (who try to promote a cosier image by advertising that all their employees wear unctuous smiles) and Grand Metropolitan (who also own Express Dairies, Watneys and the Express Newspapers). Behind them is some of the latest, most expensive technology, Holiday Inns has a central computer link-up which is said to be the world’s largest private communications network.

In package holidays, three firms — Clarksons (the largest in the world), Thomsons and Horizon account for over half the business originating in Britain, leaving the rest to seventy-odd smaller operators. Governments offer a wide range of subsidies (in Britain a grant of £1,000 was available for every hotel bedroom completed before 1973), tax allowances, low interest loans and so on. They also invest a lot of money directly in the trade; two-thirds of the airlines in the IATA are wholly or partly state owned. At the same time, governments impose laws on safety and consumer standards, many of which can be met only by the bigger operators. The 1971 Fire Precautions Act, which laid down regulations about fire safety in hotels, caused thousands of small hotels and guest houses to close or to change their use.

Jaws
These laws are designed to prevent the profit motive running riot to the point of being counter-productive and to encourage a more orderly investment of capital in the industry. A bad experience, caused by a rush to get a quick profit, can damage the industry overall; and that is the sort of thing governments are supposed to prevent. The film Jaws showed how tills operates, and there are many examples of it in real life. In 1962 the Swiss ski resort of Zermatt suffered an epidemic of typhoid caused by its neglect of the water supply in favour of building hotels, ski lifts and the like. In 1973 the typhoid bacteria was found in the water in Miami. The authorities could not ignore the problem, as had happened at Zermatt; they advised everyone to boil all their water but refused to use words like ‘contamination’ which, although accurate, might have damaged their holiday bookings.

Workers who spend their lives on the treadmill of exploitation need to buy a holiday once in a while, to restore themselves. The industry which sells these holidays is now big business and operates under all the contradictions of any capitalist enterprise. The rush to invest in tourism has proved environmentally damaging — although the ‘environment’ is usually an essential part of the commodity which the industry sells. In some ‘developing’ countries the tourist trade has been built up at the expense of other industries which, by the standards by which capitalism judges profits —might well prove to be more worthwhile. A mess which is typical in a society where wealth is turned out to make profits and not to satisfy human needs.

There is a final irony. Holidays are about illusions, about forgetting reality for a while. But the trade which markets those illusions is itself being forced up against its own reality. And it is not always having a lovely time.

Ivan

Election result: They won—you lost (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now the election is over you may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was all about. Maggie is well installed in the power seat she so blatantly wanted, the Labour Party is licking its wounds, the Liberals are picking up the pieces of Steel’s Battlebus (or was it a blunderbuss) and one or two kilted academics are doing historical theses on the rise and fall of the SNP.

POST-ELECTION QUIZ
But back in the council houses and the factories, one thing has emerged; nothing much has happened. The change is in inverse proportion to the noise that the parties of capitalism made during the election campaign. Most people are still workers. So in order to brighten your day, here is a simple quiz. Here are quotes from Labour, Liberal and Tory Manifestos and material for the 1979 Election. Your job is simply to identify who said what. Answers below, together with an assessment of your results.

1. Employment
(a) The . . . will pursue policies which give a high priority to the return of full employment
(b) We need to concentrate more on the creation of conditions in which new, more modern, more secure, better paid jobs come into existence
(c) We have an unjust industrial society in which most workers are pitted against management and are denied any share in decision taking or in profits

2. Housing
(a) In the first session of the next Parliament we shall therefore, give Council and New Town tenants the legal right to buy their own homes
(b) Councils should be required to build more homes for sale
(c) . . .  does not oppose the sale of Council houses to sitting tenants who want to buy

3. Education
(a) We see education and training as a lifelong process that must be as widely available as possible to people of all ages
(b) The . . . party believes in equality of opportunity
(c) We must restore to every child, regardless of background, the chance to progress

4. The Individual
(a) Our policy will be to tilt the balance of power back to the individual and the neighbourhood, and away from the bureaucrats of Town Hall, Company Board Room, the Health Service and Whitehall
(b) Bureaucracy and powerful organisations triumph at the expense of individuals who feel powerless to influence decisions that affect them
(c) I want to expand peoples’ rights, not restrict them. I want people to have more say in their own lives

5. Europe
(a) We therefore, propose fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy to produce competitive prices, avoid structural food surpluses and encourage efficient farming
(b) Our policies for the reform of the CAP would reduce the burden which the community budget places upon the British tax payer
(c) The CAP raises serious problems for British Agriculture — distorting the balance of production; decreasing consumption through inflated prices in the shops; and stopping the industry from growing. That is why . . . seeks a fundamental reform of the CAP.

6. Law and Order
(a) We will fight against crime and violence, which affect all western societies. We will continue to back the police with proper resources and manpower
(b) The steady increase in crime can only be checked in the short run by recruiting many more police, by improving working conditions . . . having the greatest practicable number of policemen “on the beat’’ by day and night
(c) Surer detection means surer deterrents. We also need better crime prevention measures and more flexible, more effective sentences. For violent criminals and thugs, really tough sentences are necessary. But in other cases, long prison terms are not always the best deterrent

7. Environment
(a) The quality of our environment is a vital concern to all of us . . . We shall continue to give these issues a proper priority. Subject to the availability of resources we shall pay particular attention to the improvement and restoration of derelict land, the disposal and re-cycling of dangerous and other wastes and reducing pollution
(b) . . . is proud of its record on environmental matters. . . . will: develop policies for resource conservation. Use our campaign for a better environment to provide the basis of secure employment, for example in pollution control and in waste re-cycling
(c) 1. Conservation and wiser use of scarce resources especially land and energy; 2. War on waste and pollution; 3. Tire need to preserve the natural environment for future generations 4. A re-ordering of our economic and social priorities to put them on a sounder basis

8. Northern Ireland
(a) For the present direct rule remains the only viable alternative. Any change can be made only with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. We will work to make it more accountable and democratic
(b) Its future still depends on the defeat of terrorism and the restoration of law and order
(c) There must be no capitulation to violence. Direct rule must continue for the time being

9. Women
(a) Equal opportunities for men and women in all spheres, especially equal pay for work of equal value
(b) We will progressively eliminate the inequalities that still exist in the social security and tax systems
(c) (NB One of the parties appears to have nothing to say on the subject. When I telephoned their head office the spokesperson said they were in favour of equal rights for women)

10. Animals
(a) We shall update the Brambell Report, the codes of welfare for farm animals and the legislation on experiments on live animals. We shall also re-examine the rules and enforcement applying to the export of live animals
(b) We will have stronger control on the export of live animals for slaughter, on conditions of factory farming and on experiments on live animals
(c) Support for demand of the General Election Coordinating Committee for Animal Protection for a Royal Commission on Animal Welfare

11. The Promises
(a) I appeal to you, as a voter concerned with what is best for Britain, to throw your support behind the fresh approach which the . . . party represents
(b) We make no lavish promises
(c) It is the message of hope for the future based on a record of promises kept, that . . . . puts to the British people

Answers to quiz at the bottom of the post

How did you score?

• If you were under 10% successful, score well on cynicism 
• If you were 10% to 40% successful, score well on desperation 
• If you were 40% to 60% successful, score well on the law of averages
• If you were 60% to 80% successful you must have written the manifestos
• If you were 80% to 100% successful, I do not believe you 
• If you were 100% or over successful, you answered each question roughly as follows:

 “That quote was taken from the manifesto of a capitalist party; one that stands for a society which puts profitability first; one which supports a world of mass starvation and food surpluses; a world of shortages and under usage of potential both in terms of labour and physical resources—a world of stock piled weapons of destruction; a world where a full satisfying life is denied to the majority. That is—capitalism. That is what Labour, Liberal and Tory all stood for in the last Election”.

Ronnie Warrington

Answers to the Election Quiz

Letter: Organisation—Industrial or Political? (1951)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from an opponent of the S.P.G.B. the letter reproduced below. Our reply to his criticism follows. The opening paragraphs of the letter need a word of explanation. In the columns of the Socialist Standard we publish articles expounding the S.P.G.B. case, written by members. We also publish, and reply to, statements from opponents opposing the S.P.G.B. In order to avoid misunderstanding we insist that the statements opposing our case shall be in the form of letters and not in the form of articles. This seems to us to be a reasonable precaution against needless confusion, but our critic does not agree; though why he wants his statement to appear as an article, not as a letter, we do not know.

Editorial Committee.

Edinburgh.
The Editorial Committee,
S.P.G.B.

Dear Sirs,

I received your letter of 11th inst., enclosing my article dealing with the present capitalist political crisis. The article is a scientifically constructed statement, pointing unerringly to the inescapable conclusion that there is but one solution, the establishment of a new social order—Socialism.

The reason given for non-publication, that “it is not our practice to publish articles in the Socialist Standard unless written by members,” is not well taken; it is an evasion of criticism, and comes with very bad grace from an organisation claiming Marxism to be the basis of its stand.

The establishment of Socialism demands political and economic organisation. The Marxian observation is: "Only the economic organisation can set on foot a true political party of labour, and thus raise a bulwark against the power of capital.” (Marx, to Hamann, Treasurer of the Metalworkers’ Union, in Hanover, 1869.)

In capitalist countries, such as U.S.A., Great Britain, Germany, etc., the tactics of the proletarian revolution are two-fold, political and industrial. Without the political organisation, the class-conscious economic organisation cannot be forged. Without the class-conscious economic organisation, the socialist political ballot cannot triumph.

Economic unity—the solidarity of the working class—is the only solid fact from which political unity can be reflected, without which there can be no political conquest. Thus the economic organisation is the “lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.” (Marx, “Value, Price and Profit,” last paragraph.)

The revolutionary political ballot proclaims the RIGHT of the working class to own and control the means of wealth production, the class-conscious economic organisation is the MIGHT to enforce that RIGHT.

No pure and simple ballot-box decision, however crushing, can dislodge the usurping capitalist class from ownership of the industrial factors of production. The proletarian revolution must guard against having weak spots in its armour.

The last paragraph of Marx’s “Value, Price and Profit,” quoted above, repudiates the position that the armed forces of the State can be converted into levers of emancipation, and, in reference to the lesson of the Paris Commune, “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it in its own interests." (Marx, Preface to Communist Manifesto, 25th June, 1872.)

Yours fraternally,

John Robertson.

Reply:
The S.P.G.B. holds that power is in the hands of those who control the machinery of government including the armed forces, and that the working class cannot remove capitalist dominance and introduce Socialism until, through socialist political organisation, they have conquered the powers of government for the purpose of introducing Socialism. There are many people who believe that during the past six years the working class have been in control of the machinery of government for the purpose of introducing Socialism. They are quite wrong. The working class are not socialist and the Labour Government was placed in office to administer Capitalism. Its faithful efforts to do so have naturally left unsolved the working-class problems that Capitalism produces, with the consequence that many workers are turning from political action towards industrial action. Having got no benefit from the wrong political action they mistakenly decide that no political action is of much use. A similar change of outlook took place after the earlier Labour Governments, and in 1926 led to the abortive general strike.

We may therefore expect, and are already encountering, revived advocacy of the kind of argument contained in the letter from our opponent. At the risk therefore of restating what should, in the light of working-class experience, be obvious, we again place on record the important proposition that while the working class must in self-defence organise on the industrial field, and use their only weapon there, the strike, there is a definite limit to what strike action can achieve, for in the last resort the capitalist-controlled State forces can, and will, crush strikes, both large and small.

As for the future and the establishment of Socialism, it is obvious that when a majority understand and want Socialism this will express itself in the trade unions as well as politically. Nevertheless the key to the achievement of Socialism will still be in political organisation and action to gain control of the machinery of government.

Now for some details of our correspondent’s argument.

We are first asked to pay attention to what Marx in 1869 is alleged to have told Hamann, a metal worker of Hanover. Our correspondent does not tell us what is his authority for believing that Marx used the words quoted. The point is important for the words were not recorded in a letter but are Hamann’s version of an interview. An English translation of a fairly lengthy passage (which includes the remark quoted by our correspondent) will be found in “Marx and the Trade Unions” by A. Lozovsky (“Martin Lawrence,” 1935, page 153). According to Hamann Marx is alleged to have told him, among other things, that “If the trade unions really want to accomplish their task, they must never associate themselves with any political unions or become dependent upon them in any way and also:

   “The trade unions are schools of Socialism. In the trade unions the workers are trained to become socialists.”

In view of these and other statements that are out of harmony with Marx’s known attitude, we agree with Lozovsky when he claims that it is impossible that Marx can really have made the statements in the version attributed to him by Hamann. And, to save needless argument about something that is now beyond the possibility of direct proof, we would add that if Marx had made these statements to Hamann then he would have been wrong. To take one example: except to a very restricted extent, are the trade unions schools of Socialism? Does concentration on fighting for the day-to-day wage demands of the particular section of workers in each particular union school them to take the all-embracing international and class view that is implicit in accepting the socialist case? In 1869 Marx, with his, at that time, understandably optimistic view of the prospect of international solidarity of trade unionists, could hope that that would happen. Events have proved him wrong; the trade unions have made only small progress, if any, towards that desirable condition. Trade union activity has not broken down the nationalistic and capitalist outlook of the mass of trade unionists; and Marx’s statement in the “Communist Manifesto” 1848, that “national differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing ” has been shown to be exceedingly premature, to say the least.

We are next told that “economic unity . . . is the only solid fact from which political unity can be reflected ”; but our correspondent does not pause to notice that there is in existence no such solid fact of economic unity (i.e., industrial organisation on a class, socialist basis), yet there are in existence political parties of socialists. Ought they then, in his view, to wind up and wait in the hope that class organisation on the industrial field will come into being?

Our correspondent then gives us what he says Marx wrote in the last paragraph of “Value, Price and Profit.” According to this version Marx is alleged to have written that the economic organisation is “the lever” for final emancipation. What Marx actually wrote was that the unions should use their organised forces as “a lever”! Such a small change of words, but such a large distortion of meaning.

Lastly our correspondent resurrects once more the hoary misrepresentation of a passage in Marx’s “Civil War in France.” Marx did indeed write that the working class “cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes” (“ Labour Publishing Co. Edition,” page 28). He was writing about the situation in France in 1871 where the State machine included organs “of standing army, police, bureaucracies, clergy and judicature,” which originated with the absolute monarchy, and he merely pointed out that “while the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society.” (Page 32.)

Or, as it is put in our Declaration of Principles, the working class must conquer the powers of govern- men “in order that this machinery, including the armed forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation.”

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

A follow up to this correspondence appeared in the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Proper Gander: The Hand-Made Tale (2019)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we’re stuck at work, stressed out and fed up with the usual hierarchies and procedures, who hasn’t daydreamed about doing something more imaginative and fulfilling? Days spent not being a small cog in someone else’s machine, but doing what we’re passionate about to make an end product of which we can be proud.

The Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries recognised that work could be more satisfying than what it has become in capitalism. This movement was a reaction to the growth of industrialism, which at that time meant ever-increasing numbers of smoky, dirty mills and factories. Its prominent members were artists and socialists who railed against how industry, and mass production in particular, churned out both dull, impersonal commodities and alienated, exploited workers. It harked back to a romanticised view of mediaeval times, when production meant individually-crafted pottery, furniture and ornaments. Emphasising how making things by hand brings us closer to what we produce, it aimed to encourage people to find pleasure again in being creative. Arts and Crafts designs were simple, light and airy, in contrast to the dominant fashion for wealthier Victorians’ homes to be cluttered, dark and stuffy. Patterns were often inspired by nature, such as in the floral motifs of William Morris’ wallpaper and William De Morgan’s pot and tile designs.

Trying to recreate both the artworks and the working practices of the movement was the premise behind BBC2’s The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts. In this show, six craftsmen and women spend a month living and working together, each week using traditional methods to make Arts and Crafts-inspired items for a particular room of the house.

Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)

The idea of craftspeople working together as a community comes from The Guild and School of Handicraft, founded by Charles Robert Ashbee in 1888. This was a collective of workshops run with the aim of seeking ‘not only to set a higher standard of craftsmanship, but at the same time, and in so doing, to protect the status of the craftsman’. The programme aims to reconstruct such a place, where artists can bounce ideas off each other, share knowledge and experience, and find ways of working well together. Although they are already skilled in trades such as metalwork, woodwork, pottery and textiles, the show’s six participants will only be using materials, tools and techniques from the 19th century. Through the weeks their tasks include manually printing wallpaper from carved blocks and making a chair by weaving its seat from reeds and using a pole lathe to turn wood for the legs.

As well as using practical methods most of us are unfamiliar with, the Arts and Crafts movement also championed styles of work which differ from that which many of us endure. For example, rest was important to the movement, as it makes work more dignified and allows time for ideas to develop. In capitalist workplaces, where time is money, any breaks we don’t end up working through are usually just long enough to gather up enough energy to last out the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, the programme imposes tight deadlines on the artists to complete their pieces, so they have to work with more intensity and less leisurely enjoyment than the Arts and Crafts ideal. And it predictably uses another TV trope of picking a winner each week, which again seems to go against the movement’s ethos. But despite this, the participants are in the enviable position of being able to sketch their ideas while sitting in the garden before heading to a workshop to make them real. Having the opportunity to collaborate, experiment and be creative is a nourishing experience for them, echoing the movement’s belief in the therapeutic benefits of crafting by hand.

Inevitably, the programme focuses much more on art than on the movement’s political ideas. Rather than just being nostalgic for previous ways of working, the movement aimed for a new society where work could again be personal and satisfying. This doesn’t have to mean only using old techniques. As Charles Robert Ashbee said, ‘We do not reject the machine, we welcome it. But we would desire to see it mastered’. The movement’s political views were shaped particularly by John Ruskin and William Morris. Ruskin criticised the alienating nature of employment during the industrial revolution, but naively believed that society’s ills could be cured by a ‘noble’ class of philanthropic industrialists (see Socialist Standard, June 2000). Morris’ views were more imaginative and perceptive, recognising that the drudgery and exploitation of employment will remain as long as employment itself exists. His vision of the future, detailed in News From Nowhere (1890) is of a world where work is pleasurable and voluntary, as it would be if services and industry were owned and democratically run by the community as a whole. The Arts and Crafts movement remains relevant today, not just for anyone who wants to design and print their own wallpaper, but for anyone who wants a better way of living and working. The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts was a welcome reminder of a movement which isn’t just stuck in the past.

Mike Foster