The Age of Sedatives (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 21 years between 1918 and 1939 have been called the Aspirin Age. They were the years of jazz and the flappers’ new morality, of sensation and unemployment, when society first pressed down in earnest upon the accelerator. The years when a world in crises and turmoil turned for comfort to—the little white tablet. A future historian may likewise seek to describe the period since 1945 in terms of the problems and panaceas of the day. He might well consider calling our times the Pheno-barbitone Phase.

“This 20th Century,” said the Medical World of May, 1953, “ is an age of sedation therapy.” About one-tenth of all our prescriptions for drugs are for barbiturates; in addition 10 million aspirin tablets, commonly used as sedatives, are taken in Britain every day. These mountains of drugs are consumed largely in combat with insomnia, which is becoming one of our commonest complaints and as such cannot be disregarded by to-day’s medical investigator. Even the august British Medical Association spent much time at a recent meeting discussing it as a major recognised illness. The day may yet come when a certificate will be signed which gives insomnia as the cause of death. The widely used sedatives have many disadvantages, such as the possibility of raising an annoying skin rash. A more sinister complication is the fatal effect of an overdose, which is sometimes taken whilst the mind is dulled by the drug. We are all familiar with the story of suicide by aspirin, now the Registrar-General reports that barbiturates are responsible for more suicides than any other substance or group of substances. The number of cases of accidental poisoning by these drugs is also increasing.

Sleep is vital

The nature of the apparently elusive thing which we call sleep is uncertain. A popular view sees it as the replacement of expended energy, like the re-charging of a battery. Another opinion, which is gaining support, is that it is a state of inhibition of the senses caused by their over-stimulation during wakefulness. A fair parallel is the donkey which is beaten excessively and so becomes indifferent to the touch of the whip. However, it is a complicated business and best left alone in this article. It is indisputable that sleep is vital to the human being, since it provides the necessary protection from the dangers of exhaustion. Sound sleep is best achieved in the presence of emotional and physical relaxation—any disturbance of it can cause great distress. ,

There are many reasons for sleeplessness, from cold feet to indigestible suppers. But the growth of chronic insomnia and the increase in barbiturate consumption are not to be explained by larger sales of bedtime fish and chips. A Middlesex doctor wrote to the Manchester Guardian of August 5th, 1953 . . . “The root of the trouble which creates the enormous present demand for sleeping draughts . . . is found in men in the increasing strain of their business worries and activities, in their fear of competition, in their apprehension of losing their jobs, in the friction among those working together under high pressure in small offices day after day after arriving there in trains overcrowded to suffocation. I have in 30 years of practice had more than enough occasion to see such cases. . . .  The increasing demand for sedation is a result of the high pressure of modern life and the inability of many people to adapt themselves to it.” That is plain enough, and is a fairly representative opinion.

The Advertisers' Remedies

The cure of sleeplessness presents no problem to the wordy advertiser. “This customer said she suffered from insomnia,” says one advertisement, showing a lady in blissful slumber upon a sharply identifiable mattress. Certain pillows, blankets and bedtime drinks, we are told, have the same desirable effect. Everyone has read the strip cartoon advertisements which suggest that a particular beverage can give us". . .  real, relaxed ” sleep which can “reach down to our subconscious mind” and open the door to success in many a field, from travel-agent to trapeze-artist. (One strip which was rather nearer the mark dealt with the problems of a harassed housewife and mother—her success was managing the kids without flying off the handle.) A subtler approach is offered in America. New York City has the “World's Only Sleep Shop,” a retail establishment which provides for a bottleful of bedtime difficulties. There are firm mattresses and soft mattresses, and some half-firm and half-soft. Dust-free pillows, musical alarm-clocks, anti-snore ear plugs, window silencers and so on. The very latest books about sleep are also on sale, if you should still think that you need them. (In America, incidentally, the yearly consumption of barbiturates reaches the shocking average of 24 tablets for every man, woman and child.) There is one thing which the sleep salesmen never mention. About half of the world’s population sleep—quite soundly—on the earth or a hard mat, with no pillow or one of wood or china and with little or no covering.

The Road to Suicide

This is a world of war and destruction, noise and competition, hydrogen bombs and helicopters, speed and smog, and to live in it we must make unnatural “stop and start” demands on our bodies and nervous systems. These demands are responsible for the rising incidence of nervous disease; each man between the ages of 35 and 65 has to-day as much chance of going at least once into the overcrowded and understaffed mental hospitals as of contracting cancer of the lung, or of being knocked down on the road. And for every patient in the mental hospitals there are thousands outside who are suffering from emotional disorders and who go to their doctor asking for something to calm their nerves or to give them a good night’s rest. The doctor, often himself a victim of modem strain, and with a waiting room probably already overfull, has little time to try to unravel the causes of his patient's trouble. The cure in most cases—a long and thorough rest—is out of the question, for both patient and doctor have a living to earn. So an attempt is made to outwit the symptoms of the illness and the patient leaves the surgery gratefully clutching a prescription for a sleeping draught. Thus a nervous person may start on the road to barbiturate addiction—by far the commonest type of drug addiction—and possibly eventual suicide. For a lengthy use of barbiturates can in itself foster the very conditions—insomnia, depression, anxiety—which it is originally prescribed to cure. For this reason, many doctors try to get away with prescribing a “placebo” which is a “sugar and spice” pill designed to calm the patient in the belief that he is taking an effective drug.

An old, wise man, once said that we always proceed from the simple to the complex and ignore the obvious. The expanding use of sedatives is an example of this. It is an elaborate attempt to shelve a problem which in its bones is quite straightforward. If the tensions of modem capitalism do not relax, the human nervous system will suffer deepening harm. That is the harsh simplicity of the matter. It is worth a little cogitation. Even if it means losing a little more sleep.

Ivan

A message for Cathy (1990)

From the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somewhere in the middle of the Byline broadcast 'Cathy Where Are You Now?' (BBC1, 9 July), which was promoted as a sequel to the twenty-year-old documentary drama 'Cathy Come Home', viewers may have heard a familiar lament to the effect that we all "have a right" to a roof over our heads. Let us state at the outset that if there is one essential need among many others that under the capitalist system we have absolutely no right to it is a home. Were it otherwise none of us would be without one. Cardboard City could exist only as a sick joke in a tuppenny historical satire. That exploiter of human need, the landlord, would have gone the way of the slave-trader and the witch-burner.

What failed to emerge from the broadcast in any other than an incidental sense is that housing, far from constituting an inalienable right, carries no higher status than that of an entitlement conditional upon the would-be purchaser's having enough money to pay for it. Since most of us are dependent on a wage or salary, what we finally own is not a home, which is the property of the money-lender, but a mortgage. Moreover, as with any other commercially-negotiated loan, it has to be paid for—"serviced", as the euphemism has it—and expensively at that. Mrs Thatcher's "property-owning democracy" is, for most of us, a shadow of a thing, productive of nothing more substantial than nagging worry if not illness and, for a desperate minority, even suicide. That this judgement applies as absolutely to those of us who are buying "our" council houses as to any other house-buyers is axiomatic (Mrs Thatcher’s "gift" of a qualified ownership has already been paid for in rent over the years). Erstwhile council tenants can be—and indeed are being—evicted where they default on their new mortgages.

And what, exactly, have these council tenants been offered? A quick trip round the average council estate should disabuse even the most hostile among the self-styled "middle classes" that its occupants, where they are able or willing to buy, are "getting something for nothing". Built on the cheap, many of these mean ghettos have degenerated into underserviced and infested slums, veritable universities of disaffection and crime, where the policeman enjoys a higher profile than the social worker or the health visitor. The sorry truth is that thousands of council tenants, far from being able to buy their all too basic accommodation, stand in arrears of rent and are in no position to clear their debt.

For many—nowadays a majority—who are obliged to resort to the private market, theirs is in many respects an equally depressing plight. While government ministers juggle cynically with their recurrent financial crises (an endemic feature of the capitalist system they so enthusiastically espouse) house-buyers are finding their mortgage repayments increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to meet. Let borrowers introduce the term “rights" when they next meet their building society manager in yet another effort to renegotiate their loans. Their reward must be, if not the uncomprehending stare, then the patronising smile of the worldly-wise money merchant whose primary purpose is to safeguard the building society's assets, not to provide shelter for the "impecunious".

Skid Row and Cardboard City

In the case of that increasingly large number of erstwhile "proud home-owners" who are forced onto the street, there remain the hotel room and the shared kitchen and lavatory already discovered by so many single parents—usually abandoned young mothers—and their children. A few statistics provided by the Byline programme help to illustrate this growing scandal. In 1966, homeless families in emergency accommodation numbered 4.400; in 1989, that figure had risen to 38,000. In what was described as an average hotel of thirty-six rooms the occupants shared one kitchen bookable in advance, forcing many to resort to the junk food market or to shift for themselves late at night— too late for the children, who had to make do with a stop-gap meal earlier in the evening.

In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that so many homeless people are prepared to risk police and local authority harassment by taking to the road in converted vehicles, or living in tented dwellings. Squatting continues to provide some homeless with a roof but relentless official pressure backed by changes in the law have made this option much more difficult. Such makeshift arrangements as vehicle conversion, fixed of mobile, do at least afford a measure of independence, tenuous though that may prove to be. The long-tolerated experiences of traditional travelling people such as the gypsies, for whom harassment of one kind or another has always been a hazard, are visited upon these more recent and, in many cases, involuntary nomads. Authority in its various manifestations has always and everywhere found it difficult, both socially and politically, to come to terms with those who demonstrate a readiness to break free from its magisterial control. Police harassment. often prejudiced in itself, is in reality a response to any uninformed public resentment which may contain more than a hint of jealousy.

The final depth for all too many, however, has to be the cardboard boxes of Skid Row. During a recent Nick Ross phone-in the Housing Minister, Michael Spicer, was heard earnestly reminding us that Cardboard City is populated by the single homeless male—as if, even were it entirely accurate, this dismal fact constituted an extenuating circumstance for government to cling to as it peddles its miserable excuses. We are now informed that the government will commit fifteen million pounds to the task of clearing city pavements of their down-and-outs. That this is cosmetic—mere political opportunism—is searingly obvious. What an advertisement for "popular capitalism" in Britain, one of the world's richest countries (but rich for whom, one wonders?) that visitors to London should have to run the gauntlet of the cardboard squats of the moneyless and jobless as they negotiate the precincts of the concert halls, bridges and underpasses of the capital city. Why. even poor old Mother Theresa confessed to shock. So they'll find a barracks for them and then amend the law to prevent them from returning to be stumbled over. Out of sight, out of mind. Charles Dickens would have relished such material: Spicer's ugly cant would have made his mouth water. So what is to be done?

Providing homes no problem

At this point the 'Cathy' follow-up collapsed into bathetic nonsense of the “nobody should have more than one home” variety. "People who are prepared to work hard should be allowed a loan. Security? Why, the house they promise to build, of course”. ‘‘Bricks and mortar should be released for all who want them". ("Released"? There's a euphemism for "sold", if you please!). Nowhere in the broadcast was it even hinted that, were we all to enjoy, as of right, adequate housing the capitalists, who control the building industry would be bankrupted. Abundance in any commodity spells ruin for the profiteers. Prices would plummet and production cease.

Paradoxically, the planet itself is made of building materials. And in this country alone the necessary skills abound. Thousands of building workers are unemployed. The accumulated experience of centuries could be brought to bear on matters—heating and ventilation, for example—that even the Romans could approach with confidence. It could all happen but for one baleful impediment: under capitalism capitalists must capitalise—or perish. This inescapable requirement applies as surely to state capitalist Russia and China as to the mixed economies of Japan and the USA. The money system serves to facilitate what amounts to a form of rationing in the means of life itself. And the misery this entails is allowed to continue in order that a small minority class of parasitical manipulators should be maintained in the life-style to which it is accustomed.

So the only answer to housing deprivation, as to all other such “problems” under the capitalist system, remains unfettered production to meet need (as opposed to profit). Which means the end of capitalism. All of which leads to one unavoidable conclusion: whereas the world's capitalists understand this perfectly clearly, which is why they make—and have always made— such monstrous and unprincipled efforts to conceal the truth from the rest of us, we, the working class, who produce everything, have hardly begun to. Until we do, the Cathys of this world must remain homeless.

Richard Cooper

Caught in the act: Who's afraid of Labour? (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are few more repulsive sights than local Tory activists exulting in an election victory, especially when this happens in the small hours of the morning when everyone else wants to go home to bed. Thus it was in Ealing, a local election result which the Labour Party could not explain in any way other than their own unpopularity. It seems that, in spite of everything that has happened since to give the Labour council confidence that they would be re-elected, the voters in Ealing had not forgotten the steep increases in rates which Labour imposed. Their misguided outrage at this was titillated by bloodcurdling stories about lavish council expenditure on bizarre lame-duck minorities and the creation of a lot of lucrative non-jobs for the boys and girls in the party. Nevertheless the Labour Party did not expect to lose Ealing; as Bryan Gould said in the stunned aftermath of the Tory victory, they thought they did not deserve to lose there.

If that means anything it is that in Ealing the Labour council had industriously applied itself to shedding the loony-left tag which it acquired in 1986 and had become a model of Kinnockist moderation—appropriately enough since it is the borough where the Labour leader lives in surprisingly modest style for someone who sees himself as a future prime minister. Labour's transformation did not please everyone and there were some well-publicised rows over the economies which the council imposed just before the election, involving councillors who were under the delusion that Labour administrations should act differently from those run by Tories. If the Labour Party did not "deserve" to lose Ealing it could only have been because they had done such a good job of disguising themselves as Tories. After all that effort to obliterate the differences between the two parties how could the voters be so ungrateful as to choose between them?

Lunching in the City

The Ealing result was ominous for the Labour Party because the council there had done what the party nationally is doing. Ever since their defeat in 1987 Labour has been trying to make itself as similar to the Tories as it reasonably can. At its conferences Kinnock still addresses the delegates as "comrades" but his preoccupation is to persuade the voters that Labour is a party whose claim to their support is based on their promise to run capitalism more efficiently than the Tories have managed to.

In the forefront of this tendency is the man who hopes to be Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer and who, to prepare himself for this, has been industriously lunching his way around the City of London. John Smith is a very caricature of sober restraint; even his voice, with its austere Scottish rasp, promises a hard-headed prudence. He gives no hope to the most naive of Labour supporters that his visits to the City are to give notice, over the claret, to the bankers and stockbrokers that with a Labour government and its policies of common ownership their days are numbered. What he is actually doing is reassuring them that when he is installed at the Treasury their interests will be his first concern; “The first and overriding priority of a Labour government will be to put the economy right, so we may have to ask for patience from people" was how he put it on TV recently.

The "people" he had in mind were not the investors who infest the City but those on a rather lower income, who misguidedly think that a Labour government's priority will be to spend money on their welfare. They have no excuse for this, for Smith has held consistently to his line. Last October he warned that as Chancellor he may need . . . to postpone some of our social ambitions ." In April in New York he was soothing Wall Street with the assurance that “. . .  there will be no dash for growth under the next Labour government" and last month he was repeating the same doleful message given out by every Labour Chancellor, that if the unions press for "excessive" wage rises they will be causing unemployment.

And how does the City react to the presence in their midst of this dangerous radical from across the border, eating their food, drinking their wine and talking their language that profits come first? Well, they are by no means alarmed or even uncomfortable. The Economist reported that City analysts are widely reassured that a Labour government would be no worse (for them, that is) than the Tories. The Investors Chronicle, which does not exist to promote the cause of social revolution, concluded that Labour's economic policy ". . . contains nothing to which the City objects violently on principle .

Undeserved reputation

In fact it is difficult to understand the belief that a Labour government will always include a reckless and incompetent Chancellor, especially when we remember that recent Conservative holders of that office have included Anthony Barber. Derek Heathcoat Amory, Selwyn Lloyd, Reginald Maudling and Nigel Lawson. When we compare these with Labour Chancellors like Stafford Cripps, Hugh Gaitskell, James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey and consider how their anti-working class policies protected the interests of the capitalists we can only wonder why the City does not immediately and unreservedly welcome a Labour government. Can it be that the Square Mile is populated by people so exceedingly ungrateful that they would not recognise a profit-protective Chancellor if one was served up on—well, on their lunch plates?

Consider too what has happened in the past—the efforts of Labour ministers to convince the British capitalist class that they had nothing to fear from a Labour government and how this message was received. In 1965 George Brown said in the Director, the magazine of the Institute of Directors, that "businessmen have more hope of making progress and money under a Labour government than they had before” In 1969 Frank Kearton. who was then chairman of Courtaulds. told the Institute of Public Relations that "some of the (Labour] government s measures will stand industry in good stead in the seventies'. More recently, in 1987 Lord Donaghue. head of research at stockbrokers Kleinwort Benson, had this to say about the result of the general election which was expected that year: " . . . the

reality is that all parties in this country support a mixed economy and none has policies so radical as to be damaging to long-term investment prospects". The noble lord's research had obviously not unearthed the presence of the Socialist Party and its policies, but let that pass.

New faces

So there is nothing new in Labour s present reshaping of its policies and its image, trying to smooth out those inconvenient doctrinaire lumps of nationalisation and "soak the rich" hysteria which were meaningless but which upset the City when all the Labour leaders wanted was to have friendly lunches with them while they got down to the serious business of organising the maximum exploitation of the working class. What is new is the faces; a new generation of Labour leaders has risen since Thatcher first marched triumphantly into Number Ten and they are letting it be known on which side of the class barricade they stand. On those terms John Smith is a comforting figure and workers who are nervous about how rich, how competitive and how secure are the class who exploit them may vote for him to compose the budget of British capitalism while he tells the workers how their greed and indolence are ruining the profitability of the British economy.

Smith now promises to do the kind of balancing act which former Labour Chancellors found impossible, in spite of their promises before they got into power. He says he will energise British industry into prosperity, encouraging steady expansion while controlling any tendency to a boom in which pay claims may become too powerful. At the same time he will prudently invest in education, health care, social services and our general welfare. He makes it sound very easy and reassuring, except to those who remember what happened to the same promises made by other Labour Chancellors.

History gives no support to John Smith nor to those who are dazzled into supporting him. It is not a matter of incompetence; many of the abject, discredited failures competently tried to do the impossible—to make capitalism behave as if it were a benign and controllable social system. John Smith will not be pondering these facts as he chews his way through his lunches, for they would not stimulate the appetite of an office-hungry politician.

Ivan

He joined the wrong army (1957)

From the May 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

No medals, glory, and a brilliant army career for poor George Christopher Grice (26), of Acton—be joined the wrong army. He was once a member of the Irish Republican Army, and for harbouring some ammunition in his room he was recently sentenced at Middlesex Sessions to twelve months' incarceration in one of Her Majesty’s prisons (Manchester Guardian, 15/3/57).

This unfortunate erstwhile (irregular) soldier was obviously unaware of the benefits of being a member of the (Regular) British Army, whose manifold attractions are amply depicted in a splendid full-page advertisement in the Manchester Guardian, (26/2/57). A list of these attractions (including a good salary and prospects, plenty of travel, and opportunities for sport—blood sports, no doubt) are suitably embellished by an enormous picture of an exploding atom bomb to stress the peaceful nature of army life. Had Mr. Grice seen this advert his future career might have taken a more profitable turn: for instance, the advert, assures us that if he were exceptional (doubtful, we fear, in view of his inability to conceal a paltry collection of bullets successfully) there would be nothing between him and a Field Marshal’s baton. Furthermore, as a subaltern in his first regimental duty, be would "probably be in charge of 40 men and some thousands of pounds worth of equipment." This makes the grenade and the box containing 26 rounds of .32 ammunition that were found in his room look pretty small-time.

But Mr. Grice does not seem to have been a very steel-hearted soldier—he left the I.RA in January, 1955, because, according to the Manchester Guardian, "he did not agree with the violent side of I.R.A. activities." Mr. Cassell (the prosecuting counsel) was quick to comment on this pacifist (and if we may say so, typically Irish) attitude to army life by asking Mr. Grice, “There is no point in having an army unless it is going to fight, is there?" Perhaps Mr. Cassell had also missed the army advert (It is headed PLAY A LEADING PART IN KEEPING WORLD PEACE) which states that if you join the Regular Army “you are declaring that you are prepared actively to help maintain peace." In other words, the army will ensure peace even if it has to use the H-bomb in the process. Clear? Pursuing this peaceful theme, the advert declares that the armed forces of the Western nations form "a weighty stabilising influence in a world disturbed by -isms and -ologies" (capitalism and theology, for instance?), and if you join the British Army "you work for the continued existence of the British way of life." We would add that with explosives such as are depicted in the advert., you would also contribute notably to the British way of death.

Mr. Grice’s unfortunate choice of armies was further highlighted by the chairman of the magistrates who presided over his trial. Had he joined the British Army, Mr. Grice would have had access to all kinds of beautiful weapons (the advert mentions guided missiles); but he chose a less well organised outfit, whose relations with the British Government, moreover, are strained to say the least. Hence the chairman told Mr. Grice “bullets are for killing, and the one thing we have got to ensure in this country is that bullets are not obtained. People are dying daily because misguided young men like you collect bullets I and let them off." In case any reader gets the impression that the chairman’s statement is a piece of strong pacifist propaganda, we would hazard that it is mainly directed against people in those organisations which oppose the British state machine (the Cypriot "terrorists," Mau Mau, for example): For, under different circumstances, did not the British government arrange for arms and ammunition to be parachuted to the Maquis and other resistance groups during the late war to encourage their guerrilla struggles against enemy forces? It all depends on which side you’re on, and poor Mr. Grice backed a loser.

But perhaps there are drawbacks to joining any army. As Mr. Cassell said, there is no point in having an army unless it’s going to fight, and Mr. Grice’s father said in the witness-box: “I put down this lad’s downfall to the war, when I was away."

Amid this welter of contradictions, the Socialist message stands out clearly. Grice and millions of other young men of the working-class throughout the world are wasting their time and causing themselves untold suffering by supporting their various capitalist groups however attractively the different military needs are cloaked in propaganda to pander to nationalist prejudices. We urge the Grices of the world to give earnest consideration to the case for Socialism the only hope for world peace and the future of mankind.

Michael La Touche

Chatham House and spies (2000)

From the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the Times (16 September), a spy working for the East German intelligence agency Staatssicherheitdienst (Stasi), operating under the code-name Eckart, infiltrated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, generally known as Chatham House, for at least six years during the 1980s. He allegedly supplied the Stasi's foreign intelligence division, the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (HVA), through East Germany's London embassy, with reports stolen from Chatham House on Royal Navy manoeuvres, NATO management problems, British government evaluation of the Falklands conflict and, what may appear surprising at first, the Social Democratic Party, which had just been formed by the "Gang of Four", splitting the Labour Party. Also on 10 March 1983, Eckart sent a Chatham House report "on the Trotskyists in the United Kingdom" to his controllers in the HVA.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs conducts research projects which, over many years, have influenced British government policy-making. It has been a think-tank where the "great and the good" of British capitalism have briefed academics, civil servants and selected journalists; where they considered, under "Chatham House rules", that their remarks and statements would not be identified. From 1945 to around 1975 particularly, Chatham House became "almost the club of the foreign policy establishment", where ambassadors and diplomats "could get prior intelligence of what advice government ministers were being given". It also set up an American link through the Chatham House Foundation. John Dickie, in his Inside the Foreign Office, comments:

"Outside Parliament there are several prestigious institutions where seminars, lectures, and discussion groups produce ideas and proposals which carry considerable weight among opinion-formers . . . Senior members of the Foreign Office often attend lectures and discussion groups.""By far the most influential of all the outside organizations is the Royal Institute of international Affairs. Chatham House, as it is known from its location, was founded in 1920 to bring together people from government, politics, industry, finance, the academic world and the media, from Britain and many other countries, to examine and develop the ideas which shape policy."

Ten years ago, the Institute's research project income was around £1m, of which £50,000 a year came from the Foreign Office. In 1991, it had a membership of almost 3,500 of whom 26, including the Foreign Office, were major corporate members paying an annual subscription of £3,000. Corporate membership is also held by 230 other companies and organisations.

The "Great and the Good"

Just after the end of the Second World War, Denis Healey, the then International Secretary of the Labour Party and, in his own words a "Cold War warrior", joined the Chatham House Council, and remained an active member until he became a government minister in 1964. Said Healey in his autobiography, The Time of My Life:

"It became a major source of my education in world affairs, since it enabled me to meet people with a knowledge and experience far removed from what was available to me in my work for the Labour Party."

During the latter part of the last century, a number of prominent politicians, including Presidents Havel of Czechoslovakia and Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, addressed invited audiences at Chatham House, as did Presidents Reagan and Clinton from the United States. When Margaret Thatcher first became leader of the Conservative party when in Opposition, she tended to accept the views, and writings, of Brian Crozier and his right-wing Institute for the Study of Conflict, as well as other right-wingers such as Airey Neave, Norris McWhirter and Robert Moss. But by 1984, when she had been Prime Minister for five years, and when Sir Charles Powell became her Private Secretary for Overseas Affairs, their influence had waned somewhat; and he "gave her digests of lectures delivered to the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She lapped up everything he sent her on defence and the maintenance of a balance of arms". (John Dickie). Nevertheless, Chatham House seems to have had less influence on government during Thatcher's Premiership than with previous governments.

Brian Crozier worked for the Institute for "eleven active years" between 1954 and 1965, of which four had been under the directorship of the Hon Christopher Montague Woodhouse who, in 1953, had been MI6 head of station in Teheran responsible for the MI6/CIA coup d'etat which overthrew the Mossadeq government in Iran. In 1965, Crozier's South-East Asia in Turmoil was published which, according to the author in his Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, "became required reading for all personnel of the South-East Asia Organisation (SEATO)". But its publication, and his controversies with Kenneth Younger, a former Labour Minister of State and the then Director of Chatham House, marked his "definitive break with the liberal Establishment" and his resignation from the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

One of the most important, and influential, researchers associated with the Institute during this period was Andrew Shonfield. Issued under the auspices of the Institute in 1965, was his Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power; he was assisted by a number of researchers from Chatham House and by its Research Committee.

In his first chapter, "The Signs of Change", he asks:

"What was it that converted capitalism from the cataclysmic failure which it appeared to be in the 1930s into the great engine of prosperity of the postwar Western world?"

He argued that "the performance of capitalism since the end of the Second World War has been so unexpectedly dazzling". In the early post-war period we were inclined to dismiss the high rates of economic growth in Western Europe as evidence of reconstruction which was bound to end, wrote Shonfield. Then there was the Korean war boom in 1951, followed by a recession a year after. Things seemed to be moving back into a familiar pattern. However, the second part of the 1950s produced a further sharp increase in Western European output. For Shonfield, except for minor variations, capitalism in Western Europe, but not in the United States, was a story largely of success up to 1965. What he and his Chatham House "experts" would have said about European, American and world capitalism thirty-five years later, however, may have been a different story.

During the last decade, Chatham House has had a staff of around 35 academics, including researchers from China, Germany, Japan and Korea.

Social Democratic Party

As we now know, the Royal Institute of International Affairs was not the only organisation interested in the formation and policies of the British Social Democratic Party, in 1981, and the following years. The East German intelligence agency, the Stasi, as was the Soviet Union's KGB. According to Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB/MI6 double agent, writing in KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (together with Christopher Andrew), the KGB resident chief in the early 1980s, Arkadi Guk, "devised a conspiracy theory to explain . . . the founding and initial success of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). It had been created, Guk argued, with the help of the CIA and the US embassy in order to split the Labour Party and keep the Conservatives in power". But was this in fact just a conspiracy theory?

By 1980, the Labour Party, then in opposition, had become unilateralist, was strongly influenced by CND and wanted British capitalism to be independent of both the United States and the Soviet Union. This did not suit a pro-Atlanticist faction in the leadership of the Labour Party, led by such people as Roy Jenkins, who had become a Commissioner of the European Community in Brussels, Shirley Williams, William Rogers and David Owen, the "Gang of Four". They were pro-Common Market, pro-NATO and opposed to unilateral disarmament. They were supported by a number of lesser-known, and somewhat shadowy figures, such as Douglas Eden, Stephen Haseler, Brian Walden, Robert Maclennan, William Goodhart, Alan Lee Williams—and Joseph and Roy Godson.

Douglas Eden, an American, and Stephen Haseler, whose wife was American, were co-founders of the Social Democratic Alliance. Haseler was an academic, and a member of the Washington-based think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, who helped set up the London Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies. Both Eden and Haseler had been associated with Brian Crozier's National Association for Freedom. Crozier claimed to have assisted the Social Democratic Alliance "on a small scale", but did not, he wrote (in his Free Agent), mention his "CIA and SIS (MI6) connections".

Haseler was a close friend of Roy Godson, who was also closely associated with President Reagan's CIA chief, Bill Casey. His father, Joseph godson, was for many years the labor attaché at the United States embassy in London. After retirement, he set up with money from NATO the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding. He was involved with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which partly funded Shirley Williams's sojourn in America. Joseph Godson was associated with another founder-member of the SDP, Alan Lee Williams MP, a former Labour defence expert who was also treasurer, from 1972 to 1979, of the English Speaking Union, and chair of Godson's Trade Union Press Service. Of Joseph Godson, Eric Hammond, then general secretary of the Electrical, Electronic, Tele-communication & Plumbing Union (EETPU), commented in his book, Maverick: "I could never prove it, of course, but Joe always seemed to me to be some kind of spook". He was.

The draft constitution of the SDP was written up, in the United States, by Robert Maclennan and William Goodhart.

And the Trotskyists?

At first sight, it would seem strange that Chatham House, the East Germany Stasi, or anyone else would be interested in British Trotskyists. Yet the Security Service (MI5) has monitored, and has heavily infiltrated Trotskyist organisations in this country, since 1943. (See The Security Service 1908-1945: The Official History, compiled by John Curry, Public Record Office.)

During the 1970s and 80s, the Workers Revolutionary Party was probably the best known Trotskyist organisation in Britain, mainly because of the activities of, and funding by, actress Vanessa Redgrave, and her actor brother, Corin. There was also the Militant Tendency. Militant, first as the so-called Revolutionary Socialist League, had been steadfastly infiltrating the Labour Party since the early 1950s. Entryism was the name of the game.

Although denying that Militant was, in fact, a separate party within the British Labour Party, Peter Taaffe, who ultimately ousted the veteran Militant leader, Ted Grant, has somewhat laboriously chronicled Militant's activities within the Labour Party, in his book, The Rise of Militant: Militant's 30 Years.

By 1976, the "organised supporters" (Taaffe-speak for members) within the Labour Party had reached 1,000. Andy Bevan had become National Youth Officer. In 1978, Militant called for a return of a Labour government and the "defeat of the Tory enemy". But at the 1979 election, Thatcher and the Tories were elected. In 1980 there were riots in Bristol; and in 1981, there were similar riots in Brixton and in Toxteth, in Liverpool. Militant was in the thick of it, playing a "positive role" according to Peter Taaffe. Ever-opportunist, Militant called for the disbanding of the Special Patrol Group and the abolition of the House of Lords. Militant also pledged its support for "the basic socialist [actually state-capitalist] aim of the Labour Party embodied in Clause IV, Part 4 of the constitution". They demanded not the abolition of the wages system but a "living wage for all", whatever that was supposed to be.

In November 1982, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party decided to bring proceedings for the expulsion of five members of Militant's editorial board. After a court case which resulted in Militant's favour, they were later expelled from the Labour Party. Ultimately, most of Militant's leading members were expelled from the Labour Party as Trotskyists, while at the same time, and later, numbers of former members of the SDP were re-admitted to the Labour Party.

What the researchers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or the Stasi spy in Chatham House, made of all this is anyone's guess. Nevertheless, Chatham House exists to provide members of Britain's political and economic élite with information that they feel will be of particular use to them.

Peter E. Newell

Pathfinders: Coprophilia (2017)

The Pathfinders column from the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Which of these news stories is true: The Queen threatened to abdicate if the Brexit vote won; the Pope supported Donald Trump for president; Hillary Clinton sold guns to ISIS; the Pope called fake news purveyors 'coprophages' (shit-eaters)?

Just the last one is true. And you can't blame the Pope for swearing in Greek. Actor Denzel Washington was also incandescent with rage after a fake news story identifying him as a Trump supporter went viral. Fake news is big news since the US presidential elections were riddled with it, not least because many of the hoax items (aka blatant lies) seemed to stem from the Trump camp itself. When a quasi-secret meeting of senior Facebook executives suggested that Facebook, also riddled with fake news, had influenced public perceptions to the extent of altering the outcome of the elections, CEO Mark Zuckerberg ridiculed the idea, only to change his mind a few days later and agree to new measures to start flagging suspect stories. When confronted with the same question regarding Google's inadvertent promotion of fake news influencing the election result, its CEO responded simply "Sure", and agreed immediately to work on ways to block them.

The nub of the matter is that where once you could tell a satire from a genuine story if only because the satirists did not have the means to make their products look authentic, now anyone can create a genuine-looking website. If you are tempted to cite a news story from the National Report, Boston Tribune, Denver Guardian, Empire Herald, News Buzz Daily or United Media Publishing, you have been conned because they are all fake news sites, and there are hundreds more.

Journalists aren't immune either. In a rush to get stories out, or to follow the day's fastest bandwagons, journalists often publish first and check later, thus contributing to the fake virology. A study of US TV stations revealed that up to a third of their news reports contained unchecked information culled from social media sources which turned out to be false ('The rise and rise of fake news', BBC Online, 6 November) .

So, what's the deal with fake news? Money, in a word. There are towns in Macedonia and other poor countries where fake news generation is the main industry and source of employment (Wired Online, 8 December). The BBC article above cites a prominent shit-eater talking about the advertising revenue derived from so-called click-bait designed to pander to prejudices: "We've had stories that have made $10,000. We're constantly trying to tune into feelings that we think that people already have or want to have. Recently we did a story about Hillary Clinton being fed the answers prior to the debate. It was all fake - but that sort of headline gets into the right wing bubble and they run with it." An independent researcher agrees: "There's a lot of confirmation bias. A lot of people want proof that their world view is the accurate and appropriate one."              

But not just any people, conservatives in particular. One faker claims to have helped get Trump elected: "My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time… His followers don’t fact-check anything – they’ll post everything, believe anything" (New Scientist, 7 December). Another complained that liberals are harder to dupe: "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out" (Washington Post, 7 December). A recent UCLA study has indeed concluded that conservatives are more likely to believe fake news if it is in the form of a threat which rings true in their world view (http://tinyurl.com/hyvrpnr).

It's not just about the money. Wired Magazine points out that the past 30 years has seen a complete capsizing of news media. Where once a few big news broadcasters churned out a bland and monotonous news agenda designed not to appeal but to avoid offence, now in the 'post-truth era' a plethora of small agencies are actively hunting audiences by targeting passionately-held niche opinions. Moreover the power to propagate stories has passed from news editors to readers, and one study suggests that anger is the key motivating factor in spreading stories - the more angry the reader is about a story, the more likely they will share it. "Reasonableness gets you no points," says one former Facebook VP (Wired, 14 February).

So on this argument the people most likely to share fake news are angry right-wingers with no great interest in objective reality. Not surprisingly, some commentators fear that democracy is suffocating in a steam of rage-fuelled stupidity. It's as if someone has turned the gas stove up, and now everybody's boiling. No wonder politics seems to be going through a phase change. The lukewarm centrism of the past few decades is fast giving way to aggressive and polarised extremes that must seem unprecedented to anyone under the age of 40.

Would it therefore be perverse to suggest that fake news is a good thing? After all there is a sense in which most of the news is fake anyway, if one considers how 'real' stories about the number of infant deaths from preventable disease or hunger, or the number of people living on the street or in tents, virtually never appear in the news, which is instead obsessed with celeb gossip and party political trivia.

The capitalist class as a whole used to control workers by withholding information wherever possible. Now there's too much information and misinformation, and workers will either sink or learn to swim. In all the fakery this one fact must stand out as obvious, even to the most fact-averse conservative.

If you had to 'sell' the idea of capitalism to people on a socialist planet they'd laugh at you. There'd be nothing in it for them except misery and slavery. Most people don't support capitalism because they think it is perfect or even particularly pleasant. They support it because they think they've got no choice, and they think that because they are hypnotised by its bogus ideology, its bogus values and its bogus leaders. Capitalism is adaptive and very clever at whitewashing itself. Our hope is that, in a new climate of radical scepticism which even conservatives can't be immune to, perhaps the whitewash won't wash for much longer.

PJS

Obituary: Gary Slapper (2017)

Obituary from the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report the death of Gary Slapper, a member of long standing who first joined the Party in 1980. Gary was part of a large group of new young members who entered the Party around this time, many centred on his own branch in Islington, which became a particularly vibrant and energetic one throughout the 1980s. Gary played a very full part in expanding the branch to the extent that from small beginnings it became the biggest in the Party. He was a regular speaker and debater for the Party at this time and also regularly spoke on the outdoor platform at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.

In addition, he was a writer, contributing many fine articles to the Socialist Standard over the years under his pen-name of Gary Jay. A number of these focused on aspects of popular culture, often reflecting Gary’s deep interests in phenomena such as ‘new wave’ music.

Over time, Gary also pursued a very successful academic career – after a spell at Staffordshire University he became Professor and Head of Law at the Open University, before latterly becoming Director of New York University in London. Many readers will be aware that for years Gary was also a specialist law columnist for The Times, writing articles focusing on unusual and quirky legal cases, and which were illustrations of his good humour and keen eye for the absurd. He also wrote several well-regarded books in the field.

Gary’s death at the age of 58 was sudden and unexpected, and a tragic loss. He was a genuinely popular figure and a highly congenial man who will be missed greatly. The Party extends its condolences – including to his siblings Clifford and Maxine, both Party members.

Keeping the peace (1983)

From the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

While politicians around the world, supposedly models of sanity and clear-headedness, organise arsenals of immense destructive capacity and busily equip institutionalised murder brigades, women at Greenham Common Peace Camp are demonstrating against the use of a particular variety of nuclear weapon. The authorities frowned on them, and had them arrested and imprisoned. Their crime, as they quietly made their limited protest in the shadows of the aggressive might of the state, was refusing to be bound over to keep the peace.

The only way that many of the hideous contradictions of our society can be explained away is by the use of a distorting double-think. The language we are taught encourages us to hold contradictory views about an issue. The word “scrounger” for instance, is reserved for members of the working class on the dole, rather than applied to the socially parasitic wealth owning class. In Orwell’s novel about totalitarian capitalism, Nineteen Eighty- Four, the slogan which stares at the proletariat from buildings and posters is "Ignorance is Strength. War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom”. This sort of doublethink is nurtured by a system based on contradictions. We are told that bombs are made to keep the peace, that we must butcher people en masse in a war to “protect our civilisation”. Military spending now totals close to £1,000,000,000 a day while UNICEF, trying hard to help children living in especially bad poverty, had a total income of £171 million in 1981. That is the equivalent of 4 hours 10 minutes’ military spending (World Military and Social Expenditures 1982). The money spent does not matter; it is the priority of resources in the profit-system which is telling. The number of people estimated to have starved to death last year was over 30,000,000, or a catastrophe on the scale of Hiroshima every other day. While people are dying in desperate need of food the productive powers of society are used not to satisfy this hunger but to produce the equivalent of 4 tonnes of TNT for every human being.

Why does our society put such a priority on the production of the means of destruction? In order to answer this, we need to understand why war is a part of the pattern of social behaviour under capitalism. Wars are not fought because we have weapons. We have weapons because wars are fought. The notion that wars are fought because we are naturally belligerent has been refuted by the now almost universal need for conscription. People must have regimental discipline and bellicose aggression battered into them. It is not there naturally. As the working class becomes more literate and politically aware, the reasons proffered to justify each successive war have changed. We are well past the stage where wars were fought simply at the behest of the monarch, although there is a throwback from this in the idea of fighting for Queen and Country. The idea of fighting "a war to end wars” has lost considerable credibility since the war-torn years after 1918. They told us that World War 1939-1945 was fought so that the ruling class in Britain could protect democracy and oppose Hitler's tyranny, but the ruling class have always been opposed to the idea of democracy if it meant them having to relinquish their power and privilege. Recently declassified wartime Foreign Office communications show that certain elements in the ruling class in Britain had a sympathetic approval of what Hitler intended for the Jews.

Wars are precipitated in modern property society because of the rival economic interests of sections of the wealth owning class around the world. They are fought over trade routes like the Dardanelles, Suez and more recently the Hormuz Straits. They are fought over raw materials and resources, like the American army's battle in Vietnam and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and over markets. Competing groups of capitalists, ranged behind their respective executive committees in the form of state machines, vie with each other for the domination of areas where their goods can be sold. The real causes of a war are never mentioned by the official channels. In the Falklands war no one in the news media made much fuss about the quarrels as to which companies (English or American or Argentinian) were to eventually take control over the prospective millions of barrels of oil in the ocean basin around the islands. No one seemed to invite the shareholders of Charrington-Coalite, who own over half the land and half of the sheep, to go and fight for their company.

Any plan to end the threat of war must take into account that so long as we have a society divided into classes and nations, so long as we allow the anarchic method of production for profit with its periodic crises then for so long will there be wars and the constant threat of them. It is reasonable to expect that members of the capitalist class across the world will want to wield the most advanced and lethal weapons which are available.

The profit system operates on the basis of a minority ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. In Britain, for instance, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population own and control more of the accumulated wealth than all the wealth which could be collectively pooled by the poorest 80 per cent of us. (Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth 1980) The top 13 per cent of the population own 90 per cent of the land and over 50 per cent of the housing. These figures are roughly the same world-wide, including the state-capitalist nations like the Russian Empire and Poland, where small minorities live in luxury off the backs of the majority who are workers.

Production of wealth is carried out only if a profit can be expected by those who own the work places and equipment and materials. That is why food is not produced and transported to the millions who are starving. That is why luxury office blocks are being built for businesses while there are in Britain alone over 50,000 registered homeless families. That is why there are prices on goods and services that we have to pay, even though it is we who are making the goods and providing the services. It is in this social and historical setting, a world divided into two classes and many nations, where rival economic interests are pitted against each other in a relentless drive to dominate areas of exploitation, that the problem of modern warfare arises.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has fairly limited objectives. It does not stand for an end of the need for wars. We recently read about the case of Gunner Jeffrey Clare who was dismissed from his artillery regiment in Germany for being an active CND member. (Guardian 24, September 1982) CND are spending some of their funds on legal advice to try and claim compensation for his dismissal and actually boasted of having 20 members in the armed forces. Among those paid up members of CND who were in the military services were "three sailors from the destroyer HMS Sheffield, whose membership cards went to the bottom of the South Atlantic when she was sunk by an exocet missile.” (Guardian, 24 September 1982)

Similarly, religious opposition to particular weapons is equally limited and inconsequential. A recent Church of England working party report came to the conclusion that a nuclear war would be really horrific and so not permissible by god (the supreme arbiter of ways in which workers can kill each other) but that the church would have to give its blessing to any war which was waged "as a last resort . . . for a just cause, without a direct attack on non-combatants. . . and only after a formal declaration" (The Church and The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience). The machine gun, napalm and bacteriological weapons then have been given the divine thumbs up, so long as the war is “just" and so long as it is played fairly. Christian generals are therefore reminded to provide an adequate formal declaration before they blow a city to smithereens.

Wars are fought for the interests of the wealth owning class. But it is we workers who are persuaded every time to do their dirty work for them, to fight their battles. Our antagonistic interests are fallaciously portrayed as being united, under the flag of nationalism; "We are all one nation, rich and poor”. And this lie is told to workers in all countries. This idea of nationalism is more powerful and influential than the most powerful nuclear weapon, as all it takes is a change in the prevailing ideas about the need for classes and war, and nations and then bombs can be dismantled and tanks melted down. The privilege of the wealth owning minority, bombs and nations are only in existence because certain ideas presently prevail. Change the ideas and the whole madness comes tumbling down.

Gary Jay

Running Commentary: Mind bending (1981)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mind bending

Mike Molloy, editor of the Daily Mirror, recently lamented when the price of the Sun was reduced, “It’s a shame that newspapers should be marketed like packets of soapflakes and tins of beans ‘with 2p off offers’’. He stumbles on an important point. Today we are producing things as commodities to be sold. So if, for instance, you want some food but you do not have enough money you cannot have food, even though there is plenty available.

Newspapers are commodities like anything else but they have the special quality of being instruments designed to perpetuate and reinforce prejudices which are the life blood of production for profit. Where Molloy lists soapflakes and tins of beans he could also have mentioned human beings, for it is a feature of capitalism that the mental and physical energies of people in the working class are commodities to be purchased for wages or salaries.

Who are the purchasers of people? An example is Rupert Murdoch whose business empire includes ownership of the Sun, News of the World and Times Newspapers. Last year Murdoch’s businesses reported profits of $41 million, a 192 per cent increase on the previous year.

Benefiting so grandly from the huge profits he gains by employing thousands of people directly and indirectly involved in the production of his newspapers, Murdoch tries to ensure that his daily prints leave workers with no doubts as to how they should respond to anyone suggesting an end to the private ownership of social wealth.

In cold blood

According to the school history books Winston Churchill was a great man worthy of admiration. From all sides you will be told he was a fine politician, a great believer in democracy, freedom and a good life for all. Even the Communist Party in Britain urged members of the working class to vote for his politics once he had made a deal in 1945 with that other great champion of freedom, Joseph Stalin.

If you believed this about Churchill you may have changed your mind after the recent edition of the BBC2 programme, Newsnight. According to documents unearthed at the Public Records Office, the great leader is on record as being not overconcerned with human welfare. In July 1944 he sent this minute to the Chiefs of Staff Committee: “I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas. by which I mean principally mustard. It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the church . . . It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women”.

Churchill was aware of the agony in which thousands of people perished after aerial bombing and shell firing of mustard gas in the 1914-18 war. The symptoms of poisoning by this gas are horrific: “After a few hours the victim’s eyes begin to smart, sneezing develops followed by nausea, retching and vomiting. Eye trouble increases and inflamation of the skin commences . . . Intense itching sets up which prevents sleep. The rash has now developed into blisters and open festering sores. At the end of twenty-four hours the victim is virtually blinded. Acute bronchitis now sets in with heart strain, death usually occurring on the third or fourth day”. (The Menace of Chemical Warfare to Civilian Populations Arthur J. Gillian, 1932.)

Like politicians of all professed beliefs before and after him, Churchill had no qualms in supervising the slaughter of workers by workers in order to protect the economic interest of the minority who are concerned with expanding or defending markets for the sale of their commodities.

Solidarity in Poland

On the 6 May the Polish Politburo announced that the independent Trade Union, Solidarity, would be able to have its own programmes on state television and radio. The union will run broadcasting studios and will be able to give views on what the official news agency (rather appropriately named PAP) described as “important socio-economic issues”.

This will be an important advantage to the Polish working class in its struggle to improve wages and conditions in the face of desperate attempts by the ruling class in Poland to extract as much wealth as possible from them in order to repay over $23 billion it owes to Western governments.

The broadcasts will be subject to official censorship but pressure from Solidarity will be able to erode this restriction as the union becomes increasingly confident of its potential strength. The union could, in time, campaign for the use of transmitters which would enable the broadcasts to be received by workers in neighbouring state-capitalist countries.

In the short-term the working-class in Poland is negotiating with the state bosses over wages and conditions of work but they have made gains which could be important in the social struggles ahead. At present Solidarity does not have the aim of joining the socialist movement for common ownership, and is influenced by fallacious patriotic and religious ideas. But it is developing a status in opposing the state which could help the organisation of a socialist party.

Budapest flutter

Meanwhile, in Hungary, an “International Ideology Conference” opened at the beginning of May with a call for attention to “national features” of communist countries. What sort of “national features”? Well, nothing specific was reported to have been discussed. However, there was one national feature of “communist Hungary”, a recent innovation in fact, that you might consider to have been conspicuously overlooked in the discussions. In April this year Hungary opened its first gambling casino. The casino, modestly situated in the Hilton Hotel, Budapest, is only open to foreigners with hard currency and. of course, to the wealthy and privileged members of the Communist Party.

Madness!

A team at St. Bartholomews Hospital, London, is conducting research into possible cures for heart disease and cancer. The team is also trying to develop means by which infertile women can be enabled to conceive children, and seeking improved treatment for diabetic infants.

For this work, to improve the quality of, and save, lives the researchers need a minimum of £5,000,000. This money is not forthcoming from the government which has more pressing matters to finance, like the £5,600,000 it is spending every four hours on the machinery of war.

Now the researchers have been forced to beg for donations to continue their work. Sophisticated medical experiments are having to be carried out in premises which one doctor described as “something between a hat factory and Frankenstein’s laboratory”. While this is happening, medical experiments are being arranged in Ottawa, in laboratories serviced with all the latest technological equipment. In this project, organised by the Canadian Defence Department, dogs will be given large doses of radiation in an effort to find an antidote to the kind of nausea soldiers might suffer in a nuclear war.

What is social madness for us must make good sense to the minority in whose interest wars are fought and who don’t think twice about paying over a thousand pounds a week in private clinics, like those around Harley Street, to receive superior medical attention when they need it.

Gary Jay

A Letter from Weymouth (1961)

Party News from the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I am managing to get out quite a bit of propaganda. I emphasised this to the local comrades along with the suggestion that we get together and have a concerted bash at all West Country papers.

My greatest joy was in finding that the local people are not as behind as people in a place like London might think. They are absolutely caught up in the whole tempo of Capitalism. Their moans and groans have exactly the same ring as the workers anywhere.

I am, as you know, here on my own and I am managing perfectly well to carry out as much party activity as could be expected from any one member, no matter how staunch he may be. We have got to start emphasising this to other members strewn all over the place who feel they are living in political isolation. I would like to see a reminder go out to all of them, saying that there isn't anything preventing them from writing in the Socialist Standard, selling the S.S., distributing propaganda leaflets, or seeking openings in the correspondence columns of their local papers.

I can appreciate the fact that Socialists will endeavour to speak to people about our case. This just isn’t sufficient! We must be busy in more ways than one if we expect to impress and forge ahead. When I approach anybody or any organisation I do not feel lonesome; I act and speak just as if we had a branch, nay, just as if the whole machinery of Socialist organisation was down here beside me. After all, what is a 100 or a 1,000 miles these days, I ask you?

I’ve written a couple of letters to both Weymouth's local papers. One is still being considered by the editor of the Dorset Evening Echo, whilst the other has been published by the Southern Times.

The next move, if it comes off, will be meetings on the beach. The corporation will let me know after their committee meeting on July 15th.

Joe McGuinness

The Shankill Campaign (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 13th June, 1961, Belfast Branch nominated Comrade W. Skelton to contest a municipal by-election in the Shankill Ward of Belfast. Shankill is a very safe Unionist (Govt.) Party seat, but we also expected candidates from the Labour Party (which organisation has put in a lot of the usual “ward-healing” work in the area and contested the seat many times) and the Ulster Protestant Action. A Labour nominee did call at the City Hall and collect Polling Registers where he learnt of our definite intention to contest the ward; the fact that on Nomination Day candidates from the Unionist Party and the W.S.P. only were nominated would seem to indicate that our presence dulled the fervour of the Labourites.

Faced with a straight fight with the Unionists we had to make doubly certain that our propaganda in the ward was as far-flung as possible in order to ensure that we did not get the usual Labour and anti-Government vote. In spite of the fact that our opponent (a certain William Christie, owner of a well-known local chain of wallpaper stores) stated that he would hold no public meetings but would conduct a campaign with the assistance of a large team of door-to-door canvassers we decided on a full programme of public meetings.

Christie did indeed use a large number of canvassers and several loud-speaker-bearing vehicles to tour the ward nightly: everywhere the message was the same: “A Communist has dared to stand in this loyal ward of Shankill—give them their answer!” Such a message in such an area created difficulties for the reception of our case but, as well, to anyone knowing Shankill and the “answer" usually forthcoming from there, it seemed a direct appeal to violence. We challenged Christie to repudiate these statements or meet us in debate before the electorate and present his evidence of our “communism” but true to the role of cowardly master of a cowardly campaign lie answered us with silence.

Night after night during the campaign eighty per cent of our membership turned up to support the meetings and, when these concluded, give out election Statements. Nearly ten thousand Statements, plus five thousand leaflets, were given out in this way and in addition to this large posters were pasted on walls in the ward. Mostly 2 or 3 a.m. was “quitting time” and towards the end a few hardy members had a couple of all-night sessions. As in our last campaign, from which we had scarce recovered, the great majority of our comrades worked splendidly.

Polling day was a dull affair for us. We were unwilling and unable to “man the polling booths” and we contented ourselves sitting convenient to a few of the larger ones suitably identified, in the hope that some people would want to discuss with us. Very few people came on foot to vote and though many did vote for us it is unlikely that they would have run the risk of publicly identifying themselves with us—in view of the considerable show of numbers the Unionists had on duty around their expensively hired caravan Tally rooms at the different polling booths. The Socialist voter living in an area like Shankill has to be very discreet indeed! Between eighty and one hundred cars were in service by the Unionists and bands of women workers plied the streets in the ward trying to keep those cars occupied. In spite of this, however, most of the cars sat for very lengthy periods and often when active it was to convey a single voter. Obviously, in their traditional stronghold, the Unionists were having difficulty in achieving what they cynically refer to as “pulling them out.”

With polling over we went to the City Hall for the count. Each candidate had a ticket to attend and a further seven tickets was available to each for the purpose of providing scrutineers. As our candidate was working that evening (at this stage the “count” does not justify loss of earnings—even if the work to that end does!) we had only seven present. The Unionists, on the other hand, must have had several hundred present—by virtue, apparently, of being “visitors” of other Aldermen and councillors, and these conformed with the usual standards of a Unionist mob—mean and vicious, very stupid, and very, very noisy.

When the Returning Officer announced the result, Christie 3,800, Skelton 454 (“the Socialist candidate forfeits his deposit”) Christie arose to the howling of the mob but contented himself with thanking the R.O. and staff and claiming that the result “speaks for itself.” The mob then began to shout “Where’s Skelton?” and it was pretty obvious that they were not bent on sympathy. This cry changed to “God save the Queen,” sung lustily, and at this we began the business of leaving with all the speedy dignity we could in the circumstances command.

Looking back at the result we are encouraged. Unlike Duncairn each voter had only one vote; the Catholics in the ward did not vote at all, the few “commies” in the area would be naturally hostile and Labourites deliberately abstained or. in some instances, adopted our method of marking their ballot paper (thus: N.l. Labour).

Certainly it is pleasing to think that our existence as a Party caused the Unionists to bring out their Party machine and spend anything from £700 to £800 (in a local government election) to keep Socialism out of a ward they could truly claim to “own.” As a result of our campaign we have become very widely known as a political party and this must augur well for the future—even if it creates precedents which necessitate the establishment of an election fund and the promise of much hard work to come!

Richard Montague.

General Secretary.

News From Wales (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principality continues to provide events and talking points for that section of its people (alas, still the great majority) who see no further than the day to day controversies of those personalities and organisations whose business is to carry out the function of maintaining capitalism. The unimportance and—in some cases—the absurdities associated with the comings and goings of the various individuals who make up our Council Chambers can only be appreciated by the Socialists among us who are still much too few to have an effective voice in affairs.

Pride of place must be accorded to the local elections. The usual candidates representing the usual parties, with one or two exceptions, took the field. Labour managed to attract a good deal of support especially in industrial areas though, in rural areas mainly, the Independent and Welsh Nationalists got a fair number of votes. In the Llanelly area the Welsh Nationalist candidate made great play in his election address on the question of local rates and “abuse” of public funds. The Swansea branch SPGB made a fairly detailed statement on the question of the effect of bigger or smaller rates and tax demands and challenged the participating candidates to show how the raising or lowering of rates and taxes, etc., in any way affected the working class. The challenge was met with a blank silence.

Another point of discussion has been well aired recently, namely, the question of Sunday Opening. Despite the virulent attacks of various religious organizations, the position appears to be well on its way to a final solution—the possibilities being that in the none too distant future one will be able to have a pint of one's favourite on a Sunday. Socialists again see this question in its true perspective and only point out that the “new freedom” when it comes may be such that pub managers and servers, etc., may have to forego a day off. Naturally such workers may be prepared, like so many more, to sacrifice more and more leisure for more and more money in order to catch up with more and more living costs.

The Report of the Committee on the Re-distribution of Boundaries, etc., has created quite a stir. Roughly, the Welsh Counties are to be amalgamated to form five large counties which will presumably cut down costs in administration, Glamorgan being the exception. This again is an example of fiddling with trivialities.

What has concerned many of the steel and tin-plate workers of the Swansea and Llanelly areas recently was the “Lock-Out" that took place at two of the Steel Co.’s of Wales strip mills. Briefly, sales in tinplate have been falling off, with increases in stocks as a result. This forced the Company to reduce the working hours with a resultant loss in wages for the workers. . The workers' reply to this has been to operate a “go slow” policy which resulted in the Company closing the factory gates. Now, however, the workers, through their Unions, have informed the Company that “We are prepared to work immediately they call us in.” It should be perfectly plain to the workers now that not being owners of the means of production, they have no right to work or be on the premises unless they are wanted. The law, of course, would, if necessary, have fully supported the Company.

We were also to have been treated to a visit from “God Incorporated,” the Billy Graham menagerie. Billy, it seems, was taken ill, but the meeting took place despite this and attracted over 30,000 delirious hymn-singing workers. Some scenes bordered on fanaticism. It may be significant to note, lest one becomes too despairing over the scene of 30,000 workers chanting for “pie in the sky” while the Steel Company locks them out, that a report in the Western Mail points out that more and more churches in South Wales are closing down and that there is a shortage of young blood entering the Ministry.

Perhaps we shall be in a position to report in a short while on the German Panzer troops in Pembrokeshire. In the meantime, the invasion has not yet been fully arranged. When it has been then the Welsh contingent of the Polaris army at Holy Loch and elsewhere can “fight” nearer home. As for Socialists in Wales, we try to reach the brains of our fellow workers with all the means at our disposal.

W. Brain

Cooking the Books: Growth of What? (2017)

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

In an article in the New York Times (6 February), 'The Economic Growth that Experts Can't Count', Patricia Cohen reported on criticism by some economists of increases in Gross Domestic Product as an adequate measure of economic growth. GDP, she wrote, 'is designed to measure production and just production – not welfare or happiness.'

'At its most basic, G.D.P. is calculated by looking at prices – the price of materials, workers, overhead and so on that it costs to make a product and the price that consumers in turn pay for that product. And while prices can be measured, they don't necessarily reflect the value of quality and experience. As far as G.D.P. is concerned, a delectable $20 meal that would wow Julia Child is equal to a rubbery, tasteless one that costs the same amount. The growing suspicion, however, is that in a digital world overflowing with free services like Facebook, Google and YouTube, price is an increasingly ill-suited proxy for value.'

This is true. GDP does not measure use-value (Cohen's 'value of quality and experience'); it measures only exchange-value expressed as price, or monetary value. This is the only sort of value that capitalism is concerned with increasing. Although what is produced does have a use-value (otherwise no one would want to buy it), this is not the aim of production; it's profit, the difference between what a capitalist firm pays to produce something (the exchange-value of the materials, energy, labour-power, etc) and what it obtains from selling it (the original exchange value + the new exchange value added in the course of production).

GDP is a measure of the exchange-value of new wealth produced as commodities in a country in the course of a year. 'Growth' is the amount this increases from one year to the next (when it does increase, that is, as from time to time it falls, as after the Crash of 2008).

GDP is calculated by adding up the 'value added' (the term actually used by national accounts statisticians) in each branch of industry or line of activity. Basically, this is the difference between what, apart from labour power, was paid for the materials, etc to produce goods or services  and the price obtained from selling it. In Marxian terms, very roughly, surplus value (s) + variable capital (v) as the wages and salaries of productive workers.

Supporters of capitalism say that growth in GDP is a good thing as it makes us all better off. They argue that, if the population remains the same or increases at a slower rate than GDP, each person has more. On average maybe, but this does not mean that everybody actually gets more. That would be to assume that the new wealth was evenly divided, which of course it is not. In practice, given the inequality of wealth ownership that is the basis of capitalism, 'to him that hath shall be given' and the rich get richer while the rest of us stay more or less the same.

In any event, as Cohen noted, GDP is not a measure of human welfare. It does not measure use-value. In fact, it includes products that are useful to capitalism but of no use to human welfare, such as arms and financial services. Bourgeois economists get into difficulty over GDP because, according to them, a good's price reflects its 'utility'. So they think that GDP is a measure of use-value as well as of exchange-value. But GDP can't count both as that would be to compare apples and pears.

Ironically, Marxian economics sees GDP for what it is – a measure only of the total amount of new exchange-value created by labour in the course of a year.