50 Years Ago: May-Day (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First of May is round once again, but, unfortunately, the wage-workers are not yet ready for the great demonstration which shall demonstrate, not the workers’ disunion and lack of class-consciousness, as do those of to-day, but their irresistible might and determination to strike, once and for all, the shackles from off their limbs, and to annihilate the oppressor. However, with May come some sunny days, the tender freshness of young leaves and—the outdoor propaganda season in full swing. Verily Spring is a mighty ally of Hope, and your true Socialist, while rarely forgetting the ever-present horrors of capitalism, appreciates no less than his as yet non-Socialist fellow, the brightening ray and thrill of nature newly waken'd.

To us its chief meaning is renewed opportunity for work in order that next May-Day may see us measurably nearer our goal; well on the way toward our demonstration—the only one worthy of working-class attention, the Social Revolution. 

From the Socialist Standard, May 1909.

50 Years Ago: The "Great Man" Fallacy (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I read the history of Greece I am not impressed by the oratory of Demosthenes or the statesmanship of Pericles. But I note that Corinth alone contained slaves by the thousand dozen, and I ask: what was the economic condition of this class? What did they know of science or art or literature. Dickens has spoken of men and women who all go in and out at the same hours, to do the same work; people to whom every day is the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These are the people history should speak to us about, and not the depraved parvenus and braggart buffoons of royal descent. Then I say to every working man and woman: before you read the life of Cicero or Aristotle or Julius Caesar; before you become immersed in trivial biography, study well the conditions of life and labour of your social ancestors in Greece, in Rome, in the Middle ages. The proper study of a working man is working class conditions.

Socialist Standard, June 1909

Letter from Wales (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some while ago, the writer had occasion to examine an old Welsh bible. The only thing peculiar to this bible was that it had been used for religious services underground. It was the custom of the earlier generations of miners to commence their “stint” with prayers and hymn-singing. This bible still remains to remind one of the traditional Welsh attitude to religion, which has permeated the social and political history of the people of Wales. It is a long and interesting story which English historians, due mostly to tack of knowledge of the vernacular, have not been able to give much attention to; nevertheless, it can be accepted that just as druidism was the dominant religion of tribal Wales, Catholicism—followed by the Reformed Church—the faith of the Mediaeval peasant;—so Nonconformism became a strong influence upon the industrial workers in the new era of Capitalism. Today, the roots of political and trade union life in Wales still draw considerable sustenance from religion. Tradition dies hard and men like Mabon and K. Hardie (who though a Scot was “taken into the bosom” of the Welsh people) are to this day looked upon with reverence as outstanding “Christian Socialists.”

The Keir Hardie Myth 

In 1936, the S.P.G.B., in a pamphlet War and the Working Class, drew attention to the attitude which Keir Hardie actually adopted to the First World War. This must have offended many of Hardie’s admirers and in 1953 a South Wales newspaper, under a headline of half-inch capitals, published a defence of him. This was largely directed against the S.P.G.B., whose exposure of Hardie was described as a “nauseating attack,” a “smear campaign” against the “character and honour” of Hardie. The S.P.G.B., said the writer, was “ turning and twisting ” but our argument would be “torn asunder” by “indisputable facts” which he possessed “in abundance.”

Strong words. They sparked off a lively debate in the newspaper, in which the S.P.G.B. members reminded the readers of Hardie’s boast that he had helped to recruit more men to the colours than had his Liberal opponent. This, said our adversary, was a falsification of history; but when we offered him the opportunity to expose it in public debate, he refused. By this time, the Welsh members had their teeth into it; we obtained photostat copies of some 1914 issues of the Merthyr Pioneer which proved conclusively the correctness of our assertions. Need we say that, in face of this, our opponent pleaded lack of sufficient time to continue the argument and asked us to drop the matter? As our final word, we shall arrange a public challenge meeting on the matter.

It is as well to place some of Hardie’s attitudes on record. He advised against pacifist agitation, advocated national unity in wartime and resistance to an aggressor “to the last drop of blood.” Thus he was no better (and no worse) than the other Labour Party and I.LP. leaders who have given their support to the war efforts of British capitalism; Henderson, MacDonald, Attlee, Bevin and Morrison all followed him, playing the same terrible game. There is no doubt about their support of war. We can only hope that our efforts will help to show that the revered Keir Hardie was no different.

Elections and the Chapels

The local elections in Wales often resolve themselves into a contest between religious communities—“bethel” versus “Moriah", or Baptist versus Methodist with the Salvation Army thrown in as dark horses. The fact that one is a Chapel member counts a great deal in Welsh politics, local and national—not forgetting the Trade Unions. Political careerists are aware of this and even so-called communists are careful to assert their attachment to religious principles. The other day a local “Commie” indignantly challenged a Tory who dared to state that Religion and Communism were incompatible! A leading member of the Welsh Nationalist Party has recently been elevated from mere chapel membership to that of Vice-President of the Baptist Union of Wales. At the same time, his party, to prove their rebellious convictions, are indulging in pirate radio broadcasts on the B.B.C. television wave-lengths under the title Voice of Wales.

As can be seen, the few Socialists in Wales have a hard task in hand. But we shall continue the struggle.

W. Brain

Cooking the Books: More Unequal Than Croesus (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

A study into social inequality throughout human history and prehistory published in the journal Nature concluded – or, rather, confirmed, since this is generally accepted – that it was the adoption of agriculture that permitted social inequality to come about and to take off. In previous, hunter-gatherer societies, as the researchers noted, there were 'not a lot of opportunities for people to have more than others' (Times, 16 November).

With agriculture and the settled life it involved, on the other hand, not only could more wealth be produced but the extra wealth could be accumulated in the hands of those who owned land and working animals. That this is what did happen was, as Engels put it, the origin of the family, private property, and the state. The researchers added something new by pointing to the importance of large domesticated animals being put to work. This only happened in the old world and was why, they concluded, inequality was greater there than in the new world (until it was conquered by people from the old world).

This was not just theoretical speculation on their part. They came up with an objective standard to measure social inequality. Taking the size of dwellings, as for the past uncovered and recorded by archaeologists, they used the ratio of the smallest to the largest to estimate inequality:

'The paper converted the house size ratios into the gini coefficient, a measure used today in which "0" means no inequality and "1" means the highest possible inequality. Hunter-gatherer societies had a gini coefficient of about 0.17, an egalitarianism not now matched by any country. When people shifted to growing crops, it grew, to 0.35. When Rome was at its height it was 0.48. In Britain today, it stands at about 0.7.'

In other words, capitalism is a much more unequal society than ancient slave societies or feudalism. Capitalists are more unequal than Croesus. This must come as an inconvenient surprise to defenders of capitalism. Their riposte will be that modern wage and salary workers are better off than chattel slaves or serfs. This is incontestably true, but that's not the point about inequality. Inequality is relative.

Marx used the same example of the size of dwellings to make this point:

'A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls (. . .) Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature' (Wage-Labour and Capital).

Workers are better off than chattel slaves or serfs, but capitalists are even more better off than ancient slave-owners and feudal barons. So, the gap between producers and parasites has grown since those times. Capitalism is the most unequal society of all time.

Agnes Hollingshead

From The Monument by Robert Barltrop:

The Party was saved from an extreme predicament (one section of the membership saw nothing else but to sell the newly-acquired Head Office) by old Mrs Hollingshead. I went to see her in Edinburgh, and told her we needed several hundred pounds to pay the bills: she gave a thousand. Agnes Hollingshead was one of the most remarkable of people. At this time, she was ninety-two. She had run a commercial college in Calgary for several years, came to Britain in the nineteen-thirties and set up again in Edinburgh. After her husband’s death early in the war her sole wish became to amass a small fortune and leave it to the Party. She continued working until she died — her only concession to age was to give up classes and take individual pupils instead. On the day I arrived she was taking a girl of seventeen or so, dictating shorthand and correcting exercises with briskness and authority.

Besides having the school, she let out the rooms in her house to families: they paid only modest rents, but reading the Socialist Standard was a condition of tenancy. Her teaching-room was a huge room at the front of the house, and she lived in the kitchen at the back with a cat named Karl Marx. A tiny, dignified woman, she had an indomitable zest for living. She attributed her age and her fine teeth to ‘plain living and high thinking’ and to vegetarianism, and confided to me that she was worried by shortness of breath when she walked up the steep hill by her house: ‘I’ll go to the man at the nature-cure clinic,’ she said, ‘because it isn’t natural to be puffing like that.’ She died at ninety-six, and left nearly four thousand pounds to the SPGB.

The Monument: the Story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain by Robert Barltrop (Pluto Press, 1975) Page 161

Obituary: A. Hollingshead (1959)

Obituary from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mrs. Agnes Hollingshead died in Edinburgh at the age of 91 years. This old Comrade was, for many years, active in the old Socialist Party of Canada. When a younger woman, she spoke in Calgary and Toronto. Last year, in a recorded message to the World Socialist Party Conference at Boston, U.S.A., she said it was still her ambition at the age of 90 to go on the Soap-box.

Mrs. Hollingshead was a very talented woman. She ran a business college in Calgary, and on her return to the “Old Country” in the 1920’s taught languages, shorthand-typing, and music. Her home in Edinburgh was made freely available to any member and sympathiser. She was the Edinburgh Group secretary up to within a few months of her death. Her keenness and enthusiasm for Socialist propaganda in her sprightly old age is an object lesson to young members. If anything, she became more active as she became older.

Mrs. Hollingshead was very generous to the S.P.G.B. When funds were lower than usual a few years ago she came to the rescue with a substantial donation. Members affectionately referred to her as “the old lady from Edinburgh”—a kind of Socialist institution. Comrades from Overseas always made their way to her home, and she had a warm welcome for everyone. Her greatest difficulty in recent years was her inability to get to the Mound where the outdoor meetings were held by members from Glasgow.

Socialism kept Mrs. Hollingshead young in heart. She looked to the future with that irrepressible optimism possessed only by Socialists. Hers was a useful life.

The Finance of War (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Pays for Wars?

In the middle of the first World War the Socialist Standard published an article which brought us into sharp disagreement with both wings of the Labour Party, those who were all for war and the minority who wanted to stop it : on this one issue they were in complete agreement and held that we were wrong. The issue related, not to the deaths and destruction of war, but to the finance of war. The article was called “Who Pays for the War?" (Socialist Standard, Nov, 1916) and the answer given to the question was in line with what the Socialist Party had been saying about Capitalism before the war broke out. The Socialist argument was (and is) that the workers live by selling their mental and physical energies to the employing class. They then go to work and produce wealth for the employers of value far larger than that represented by their wages. It is out of this “surplus value” that the employing class came to be the owners of all but a small part of the accumulated wealth of the country. Broadly speaking, the employing class, in peace and in war, have squeezed out of their workers in factories, fields, mines and offices, all that can be squeezed out of them in the existing circumstances. This is a very fortunate situation for the propertied class, but it has its corresponding disadvantage in that the civil and military costs of running the State, its administration, its police, its armaments and its wars, are in the last resort a burden on their profits and property. In short, it is the propertied class who pay for wars.

The article published in 1916 pointed this out, and pointed out, too, what would be the likely position of the workers of the victorious and defeated nations after the war. It foresaw that in the event of the defeat of Germany the victors would levy war damages on the property owners of Germany, but that this would not alter the position of wage-earners there. The anticipation was in fact confirmed many years later, when it was shown that in 1929 the purchasing power of the wages of German workers had kept in line with that of British workers despite the yearly payment to the British Government of many millions of pounds of “Reparations” by the German government. (Socialist Standard, August. 1929). Indeed, at one period it was a common complaint that while German workers were busily employed producing the "Reparations” goods for delivery to Britain, thousands of British workers were unemployed in the trades that would otherwise have been producing those goods here.

The Keynes' Scheme in the Second World War

But if it is broadly true that the employing class at all times get all they can out of the workers, they are always willing to try to get something more if they can. And a big war has a double disadvantage for them/ On the one hand they are paying for the war, and on the other hand, under the influence of “full employment,” the workers are likely to press for higher wages. For the employing class this is a very difficult problem. They need maximum production of armaments to win the war and consequently need minimum consumption of civilian products by the workers; but this is at a time when, because of labour shortage, the workers are in a favourable position to press for a higher standard of living. The late Lord Keynes in his How to Pay for the War (Macmillan & Co., 1940), came forward to help. His solution of the problem of how to get the workers in war-time to produce more and consume less was to introduce compulsory saving and refund it after the war.

He was a realist and he recognised that workers with less than 75s a week could not go lower: indeed, he proposed that their standard of living should be raised. (It is one of the ironies of war that quite a sizeable part of the population are better fed and clothed in war-time.) Those with between 75s. and 100s. a week were to continue on their existing standard, but the group with over £5 a week were to be compelled to save, in the aggregate, about a third of their income. Refundment, after the war, was to be achieved through a capital levy. Keynes put forward his suggestions as a way to avoid inflation and as a way to transfer wealth from the propertied class to the workers. Looking back to the first world war which left the National Debt owned by the capitalist class, Keynes thought that his scheme would have the result that at the end of the second world war ownership of the National Debt “will be widely distributed among all those who are foregoing immediate consumption, instead of being mainly concentrated . . . . in the hands of the capitalist class.” (Pages 10 and 11.)

In view of what happened, and particularly in view of the fraudulent “Post-War Credits” scheme, it may be thought that Keynes, in his book, was guilty of promoting the fraud. The truth seems to be that Keynes was guilty of no more than muddle-headedness, over-optimism, and a certain array of political innocence. Under the influence of war-time emotion he had convinced himself that things really were going to be differently ordered when the war was over.

Post War Credits

Borrowing part of the Keynes idea the Government put over the Post-War Credit plan. It allowed the workers to have the higher wages they asked for (and came on strike for, often against the law), but took back some of the wages for repayment after the war. Keynes wrote in 1940 about the workers “deferring” consumption of goods till a later date: the government combined it with a steady inflation and rise of prices so that when the workers got their Post-War Credits, the money (held all these years without interest) would buy only a half or a third of what it would have bought at the time it was stopped from wages. The same applied to all the other savings the workers were induced to invest in war bonds and other government stocks.

But the government got what it wanted. The workers worked longer and harder, by day and by night, and were joined in the factories and services by their wives, grandparents (and even by the schoolchildren, who helped with the harvest). Yet the destruction of war was so great that the increased output of the workers fell far short of making good the losses suffered by the propertied class, an estimate of which put the figure at £7,000 million in pre-war values. The national debt, which in 1939 was about £7,000 million, was three times as large by the end of the war.

In a period of continued inflation and rising prices all items expressed in terms of money appear to be getting larger and larger—an appearance which is quite illusory as the worker knows when he discovers that his higher wages have to buy goods with higher prices. Nevertheless. if wages and profits aye both related to the upward movement' of prices it will be seen that the destruction during the war left its mark on the profits of the propertied class. Whereas wage rates on average have just about kept pace with the rise of the cost of living since 1939, and the total wages of the working class have risen appreciably more (one reason being the larger numbers employed) the total amount of profit, rent and interest of the propertied class in the years after the war had failed to increase in line with the rise of prices.

One other interesting confirmation of the Socialist argument is the way wages have moved before and since the great re-armament which started in 1951. In the years 1947-1951 armament expenditure was about £750 million a year, but wage-rates (due partly to the success of Government “wage freeze” propaganda) were falling behind the rise of prices. Since 1951 armament expenditure has doubled, yet the workers' wages, aided by a greater determination to press their claims, have been rising rather faster than the rise of prices, thus recovering ground lost in the earlier period.

The moral of this is that war in the modern world not only has its cause in capitalism, but it is waged financially in the only possible way, one designed to fit the economic laws of capitalism. The workers, in war and peace, do better to trust to their own determined struggle against the employers than to trust in the promises of governments, economists and politicians, about the rewards they will get later on.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: Comrade Rees (1959)

Obituary from the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Swansea Group have reported the death in Llanelly Hospital of Comrade Rees of Felinfoel, Llanelly. He was 67 years old.

Comrade Rees was crippled in the 1914-18 war, but this did not prevent him developing political interests. He was an ardent and knowledgeable materialist who, for years before joining the S.P.G.B., propagated the Socialist case on every possible occasion. It was through one of his letters to the press that Swansea Group got into touch with him; after a short while, although protesting that his disability made him only half a member, be joined the party.

Comrade Rees' death has depleted the ranks of the Swansea Group, who, for all their smallness, are doing such valuable work for Socialism.

The Labour Party Fails (1959)

From the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Never before has the Labour Party fought an election on a programme and policy so far removed from even the pretence of doing anything about the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

The five million pound election on 8th October was a triumph for Tory astuteness, a major defeat for the Labour Party, and a big encouragement for the Liberals. Almost without historical precedent, the Tories have now won three elections in succession and have increased their Parliamentary representation at each of four General Elections since 1945. From their low point of 213 M.P.’s in 1945 they have steadily grown to 298 in 1950, 321 in 1951, 345 in 1955 and now to 365. While they have grown the Labour Party representation in Parliament has steadily fallen, from its high peak of 393 in 1945 down to the present 258. And to make matters worse for the Labour Party, this last election has seen them losing many votes in both directions, to the Tories and to the Liberal Party.

Though the numbers of M.P.s has changed much there has not been a great swing over of votes. At this election about 1,000,000 more votes were cast than in 1955. Tories gained 400,000, Labour lost 200,000, Liberals gained 900,000, and “other candidates” lost 100,000. This near balance of votes has been a dominant factor in British politics since the end of the war. Under the influence of an electorate divided nearly evenly between the Government party and Opposition the Party leaders have had to restrain their more aggressive wings (the Tory backwoodsmen and the Labour “left wingers ”) in order to attract voters not committed strongly to either party. What will now happen to the Labour Party remains to be seen, but inevitably a bitter struggle will take place between rival factions there, who want to go back to “more nationalisation” and “more soaking the rich,” and those who, in the words of an Observer correspondent (October 4th, 1959) think that “the Labour Party should come to terms with capitalism, like the Democratic Party in America: that it should abandon its nationalisation plans and trade union ties, and become a modern, classless capitalist party” Squaring these divergent points of view will be made even more difficult than it was already because spokesmen for both sides will be looking for scapegoats for the electoral disaster: and looking over their shoulders at the new threat from the cock-a-hoop Liberals. As the Conservative vote, about 13.700.000, will still be slightly below the combined Labour and Liberal votes, 12,200.000 and 1,610,000, the idea may well arise at some stage of a Liberal-Labour pact to get the Tories out.

Forecasts just before the election that growing cynicism about politics would show itself in large abstentions were not borne out, the percentage voting, 79 per cent., being higher than at the last election, though lower than in 1951, when over 82 per cent. of the electorate voted. It has always been a complaint of the Labour Party that they are hampered at elections by not getting a full presentation of their case in the Press and on the air. This time the former Labour Postmaster-General. Mr. Ness Edwards, maintained that the Labour case had been fairly stated on Television and that this had counterbalanced the bias of the newspapers. Of course, when he said this he thought his party was going to win, but in any event newspaper influence on voters cannot have had the importance attached to it. In 1945, when the Labour Party had its greatest triumph, and at the 1950 election the preponderant hostility of the Press did not prevent a Labour victory and this time the heavy Labour defeat took place though they had much more support in national newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial, as well as the Daily Herald, and had also the support or at least the benevolence of the Guardian and Observer.

Not a Defeat for Socialism

Except at Bethnal Green, where the S.P.G.B. candidate, our Comrade Read, after a fine campaign by party members, polled 899 votes, the issue of Socialism versus capitalism was not an issue between the candidates. This did not prevent the Financial Times (October 9th) from describing the Tory victory as “A Vote against Socialism.” And many commentators wrote of the election and of the Labour Party's defeat in terms of this being the end of the “class struggle.”

An article written by Mr. Gaitskell in the Daily Herald just before polling day contained a remarkable admission about the facts of capitalism and its never-ending cleavage between the classes. Gaitskell recalled that he had been in the Labour Party for over 30 years and he conceded to the Tory claims of prosperity under Macmillan's Government the observation that in those thirty years “progress has been made.” Then he made the staggering admission that after all the reforms that have been introduced “there are still indefensible inequalities of wealth in our society — one in 100 owning as much as the other 99 have between them!" (Daily Herald, October 5th, 1959). So, after half a century of social reforms the concentration of ownership in capitalist hands is not ended, not diminished, but. if anything, increased! 

Yet never before has the Labour Party fought an election on a programme and policy so far removed from even the pretence of doing anything about the continuation of capitalism. There is quite a remarkable difference between their present tacit acceptance of capitalism and the resolutions the Labour Party used to move in Parliament in the nineteen-twenties denouncing capitalism and calling for its “gradual supersession.”

One feature of the week preceding the election was massive buying of shares on the Stock Exchange by large and small investors in confident anticipation of a Tory victory. The Tories played one card well. About three years ago City circles, with the backing of many newspapers, started a campaign to get workers who had savings, to invest in company shares and unit trusts. Then, as the election approached the City editors who favoured Macmillan warned these small investors that a Labour victory would lead to a sharp drop in the price of their holdings. This must have been worth many tens of thousands of votes for Tory candidates.

Among the defeated Labour candidates was Sir Tom O'Brien, who lost his seat at Nottingham West. Here in particular was an example of the diminutive margin of difference between the Labour and Tory policies, for just before polling day, his Tory opponent expressed his difficulty in finding anything to disagree with in O'Brien's election address: “He's got the least controversial election address I have ever seen. ‘Vote for O'Brien’ is almost the only thing in it I can quarrel with ” (The Times, October 5th, 1959). Labour leaders, with justification, charged Macmillan with having stolen their programme of reforms: which would seem to show that a majority of the workers prefer to have their reforms from a Conservative Government. If the Labour Party had been Socialist no one would steal from them.

One Labour claim was that they alone are the people able to deal with the Russian Government at a Summit Conference. Russian Government spokesmen won't have this. Moscow Radio attributed the Tory victory to the British electors longing for peace and to the fact that the Tories have a “special knack” for dealing with the Russians (Daily Mail, October 10th, 1959). Mr. Aneurin Bevan's explanation of his party’s defeat is: “We lost because our policy measured up too closely to Macmillan's” (Daily Express, October 10th, 1959).

The Other Reformist Parties

The Communists can derive no comfort from the election, either in respect of their own 18 candidates or in respect of the Labour Party, to which, uninvited, they attached themselves. In one or two of the 18 constituencies their vote increased, but the general picture was of a continuation of the 14-year decline of their vote-catching fortunes. In 1945 their 21 candidates polled over 100,000 votes. In 1950, with 100 candidates, they received only 92,000. In 1955, 17 candidates polled 33,144, and this time 18 polled only 31,000. The Daily Worker (October 9th, 1959) sadly noted that "growing support expressed by voters to Communist canvassers . . . was not translated into votes.”

The official Communist line in the Daily Worker was, “Vote for the Communist 18—elsewhere vote Labour.” The reasoning was of the usual tortuous kind and we can well understand the voter finding it hard to swallow. The essence of it was that the Tories must be thrown out because they can't be trusted, and the Labour Party put in: but as the Labour leaders also can’t be trusted there must be Communist M.P.s to keep an eye on Labour M.P.s.

The I.L.P. is in an even more pathetic plight. It can look back to the nineteen-twenties, when it boasted of over 200 of its members in Parliament: now it is reduced to fighting only two constituencies. In those days the I.L.P. was proud of its twin achievements of having built up the Labour Party and of having destroyed the Liberals: now in its own decline it sees the reviving Liberals capturing votes from the Labour Party.

The Future

The Tory, Labour and Liberal leaders all spoke as if it is possible for the Government running capitalism to control trade and employment and the price level. They all blamed the others for what goes wrong and undertook to put it right. Only Macmillan made some effort to put the matter into real perspective, as was shown in the reply he gave to the People (October 4th) to the question: “If there was a world slump, what steps would the Conservatives take to tackle the unemployment problem in this country that might result ?”

His reply contained the following warning note of what may happen

    A world slump on the lines of that of 1929 is most unlikely, but recessions in trade may well occur  from time to time, and a Conservative Government would immediately take the necessary steps to deal with them.

The fact is that the Tory Governments since 1951 have been singularly lucky, but their luck is not at all likely to hold out for another five years. The next recession may well be a much more drastic one than that from which British capitalism has just recovered: which will, of course, give the Labour Party or the Liberals (or a combination) their chance to break the long run of Conservative favour with the electors.

One thing the workers will get from the new Tory Government (workers get it from all governments everywhere, Tory, Liberal, Labour, Communist) will be the usual nauseating sermons from the rulers calling on the ruled to work harder and produce more. The working class have lost this election as they have lost every election so far held under capitalism

Edgar Hardcastle

Future of the Labour Party (1959)

From the December 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

As outsiders we look on curiously as the factions in the Labour Party argue about why they lost the election and about whether their chances would be better next time if they got nearer to the Tories or further away, or if they dropped their programme altogether. Unlike other outsiders who are butting in with advice we have no guidance to offer to the Labour Party. Our stand is a simple one. We seek Socialism and have always been convinced that the Labour Party could never be anything but an obstacle in our path: all we wish to see is the disappearance of the Labour parties of the world and their replacement by Socialist parties. But those who have not yet come to see things us Socialists do can usefully note the difficulties in which its own policies have involved the Labour Party.

Douglas Jay, the Labour M.P., who started the row. held various posts in the Labour Government. 1945-1951, and retained his seat at Battersea North in the recent election, though with a reduced majority. Writing in Forward (October 16th, 1959) under the title “ Are We Downhearted? Yes!" he admitted that since 1945 there has been “a persistent drift away from Labour towards the Tories.” and offered as a provisional answer, the following:

1 -THE BETTER off wage earners and numerous salary earners arc tending to regard the Labour Party as associated with a class to which they themselves don't belong. Few of them—least of all the women—feel themselves to be members of a “working class." We are in danger of fighting under the label of a class which no longer exists.
   If you doubt this, ask anyone who canvassed intensively in the last four weeks, particularly in the new housing estates. We must have a wider cross sectional appeal. What the public wants is a vigorous radical reforming open-minded party.
2- THE WORD “nationalisation" has become damaging to the Labour Party. This is a fact; and it is no use denying it. even if you deplore it. We have allowed the word which properly applies only to public monopoly, to be associated with social ownership as a whole. The myth that we intended to “nationalise” anything and everything was very powerful in this Election—any canvasser will agree. We must destroy this myth decisively; otherwise we may never win again.
3—Favourable economic circumstances for the Tories meant more, in terms of votes than any moral argument or propaganda vigour could counteract. True, the old people, the unemployed and badly housed, were suffering badly.

Opponents of Jay attacked him for suggesting that the Labour Party should water down its programme on Nationalisation. So far Mr. Gaitskell has not committed himself publicly in the controversy, but there is little doubt where he stood a few years ago at the time that he wrote the Fabian Tract Socialism and Nationalisation (July. 1956).

In that pamphlet he contended that nationalisation should be regarded as a means to achieving a better social system and not as an end in itself; though he frankly admitted that in the Labour Party it had often been treated as an end in itself, and indeed as “more or less identical with Socialism” (page 5). This, he said, was because many members of the Labour Party considered that nationalisation was the only way to get what they were driving at and that it could not fail to produce the desired ends. He now thinks that nationalisation is not by any means “the only way.”

The truth is that the Labour Party, in its half-century of propaganda, has accepted or tolerated the expression of many divergent views on nationalisation. Some advocates regarded it as a good business proposition; one that would show big economies, big profits and low charges. Others thought it would lead to higher wages, and others again, including Mr. Gaitskell, thought it would lead to the transfer of wealth from the rich to the government to be used to make the poor better off. (As the £53 million a year being paid indefinitely on the Government securities given to former coal and railway shareholders is probably at least double the profits they would now be getting in their shrinking industries if nationalisation had not taken place, the argument seems to be a particularly silly one).

The Whole Hog on Nationalisation

Some of the Labour leaders who want to forget nationalisation deny that the Labour Party ever intended to go the whole hog—though why shouldn’t they if they thought it such a good thing? But in 1935 the Labour Party published a pamphlet. “The Position of the Middle Class Worker in the Transition to Socialism,” by Lawrence Benjamin. In it he stated plainly that the Labour Party intended to take over the whole productive machine, land, industrial plant, warehouses, shop, stores, and the banks and financial houses. And he wrote:-

“But,” says someone in perhaps horror-struck tones, “if all the parts of the national economic machine are not privately owned, they would be publicly owned—and this means Socialism." Certainly this is true. It does mean Socialism.” (Page 9.)

The Real Dilemma

The mess the Labour Party is in is the result of its own past muddled thinking. All its groups, however divided on other things, persuaded themselves that nationalisation would be an attractive institution and a vote-catcher. They are now having to swallow the bitter truth—that the extension of nationalisation is not wanted by most workers and has nothing to offer most capitalists. (Labour parties in Austria, Germany and elsewhere have met the same drift of opinion). So now one faction would willingly drop nationalisation in order to win the next election. but this can only look like treachery to the other faction, for whom the only purpose of winning an election is to introduce more nationalisation.

The Labour Party has many other worries when it looks to its future. It would like to see the Tories reverting to their less astute policies of earlier decades, which would help to stir up interest among the workers. But according to some accounts Mr. MacMillan, himself a one-time critic of Tory “reaction,” is deliberately setting out to pursue what “Cross-bencher” calls “a Leftward reforming course.” Sunday Express (November 8th, 1959). When the early pioneers of the Labour Party dreamed of placing themselves at the head of a grateful army of electors by first popularising and then enacting a series of social reforms, they never thought of the possibility of a Tory party that beat them at the same game.

The arguments in Labour Party ranks will go on for months and years and will never be finally settled until that Party disintegrates, to give place to the Socialist Party. In the meantime the present decline of nationalisation, which we never supported, should give an added opportunity for Socialist propaganda to make headway against all the other issues.

Edgar Hardcastle

Prisons, suicide and profit (1993)

From the January 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain imprisons more people per head of population than any other European country— 97 per 100,000. Even Turkey, with a repressive government and penal laws based on the criminal code of Mussolini's Italy, and with thousands of political prisoners, cannot match Britain. And racist South Africa imprisons only 33 people per 100,000.

Neither does it look as if Britain’s prison population will decrease. A Home Office “forecast based on the assumption that crime will rise” (Guardian, 25 July 1991) suggests there will be over 54,000 prisoners in England and Wales in 1998.

For the vast majority of British inmates, theirs is a sordid world of overcrowding in decrepit prisons, slopping out, irregular visits, locked up for 23 hours a day, with frustrated and indifferent guards to contend with. Is it any wonder, then, that a significant number of prisoners, even though accustomed to a life of deprivation, inequality and humiliation on the outside, cannot cope with all that prison entails—the shock of arrest and detention, separation from loved ones, shame, anxiety and uncertainty—and decide to end their lives?

Between 1986 and 1990, 179 inmates committed suicide. In 1991 a further 42 took their own lives. Two thirds of these prisoners were on remand and were yet to be sentenced. What makes the case for remand victims so poignant is that 59 percent are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence when their cases are heard—some 27,000 out of 65,905 in 1989 (the last year for which statistics are available). An average of eight inmates a day attempt suicide or mutilate themselves—there were 3,000 reported cases last year. “We are talking about attempted hangings, slashing of the wrists, people cutting pieces of themselves" (Frances Crook, Director of Howard League, Independent, 17 April).

Judge Stephen Tumin’s 123 recommendations following his investigation into prison suicides and the 600-page Woolf Report four months later did little to better the lot of inmates or to alleviate the mental burden of the suicidal, in spite of both reports being damning indictments of British prisons, where priority was often "to process as quickly as possible a large number of prisoners with the minimum of disturbance" (Judge Tumin, Guardian, 20 December 1990).

Judge Tumin’s recommendations included redesigning cells to prevent suicide, better screening, improved codes of practice to reduce anxiety levels, and better standards regarding toilets, basins and privacy. The Woolf Report recommended that prison accommodation should match the number of prisoners by the end of 1992 and that jails should only allow overcrowding by three percent for seven days, after that on parliamentary approval. In spite of all that has been reported suicides in prisons continue apace and. although two-thirds of prisons have given more time for visits. chamber pots and overcrowding are still the normal way of life in many prisons.

In April, the government decided that the prison service in England and Wales would be taken away from ministerial control within a year to give managers increased operational independence. Kenneth Baker, the then Home Secretary, remarked how agency status would provide "the most positive environment for staff to work in and, above all, ensuring the delivery of an improved service both to the public and to those held in custody" (Guardian, 12 March). He did not mention that this would shield the government from the backlash following prison scandals and riots, and save a few quid into the bargain.

The scene now looks set for a privatised prison service with all that “privatisation” entails. In April. The Wolds prison in Hull was opened after Group 4 Remand Services beat off eight other competitors with a £4 million tender to run the £35.6 million prison, built to house 320 non-category A inmates.

The Howard League for Penal Reform, who carried out the first independent research into the management of privatised detention centres in Britain, discovered "obsessive secrecy, racist stereotyping and no tangible commitment to justice". The Howard League believes profiteering from prisons pushes up numbers and asserted that “The Wolds prison would be a showcase (for Group 4) so that other more lucrative pickings can be canvassed from other world regimes" (Guardian, 2 April).

The 50 percent cut to prison education in April contradicted the government White Paper of September 1991 put out in response to the Woolf Report: “many prisoners have inadequate educational and social skills . . . without such skills the prospects for prisoners to live fulfilling and law abiding lives on release will be greatly diminished" (Guardian, 18 April).

Prisons, all said, are made necessary by the capitalist system as they are built to house those whose “deviancy” and “anti-social behaviour” is determined by the social system they are conditioned to live in. The problem of the crimes they commit

should be approached not only as a product of the unequal distribution of wealth and chaotic labour market, but also an important aspect of the demoralising social relations and individualistic ideology that characterises the capitalist mode of production in its highest phase. (T. Platt, Crime and Social Justice, 1978).

In removing the “unproductive elements” of capitalist society. prisons strengthen "the prevalent ideology that it is individuals not institutions that are to blame for social problems and for social failures . . . [prison] therefore serves to legitimize the basic institutions of capitalist society". By keeping the "unproductive” out of sight, the prison provides an ideological veil to obscure the brutal consequences of our productive process” (M. Fitzgerald, Prisoners in Revolt, 1977).

Imprisoning those who “stray" solves nothing, for the present system of inequality, alienation and powerlessness that countless millions toil under will always churn out those willing to risk their freedom to better their lot and even things up a little bit. Only the dismantling of the capitalist system will bring with it an end to the need for prisons.

John Bissett

50 Years Ago: 1943—The War and the Workers (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column in the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The press of this country publishes reports of the wholesale extermination of Jews in Poland. We are not able to say to what extent these reports are true. The atrocity story played its propaganda part in the last war. and it is no doubt doing a similar duty in this. But bearing the record of Nazism in mind lends substance to some of these reports. The persecution of Jews as well as other minorities is inevitable in lesser or greater degree under class society. The prejudices of race, nationality, or religion is the outcome of ignorance, exploited by rulers and fanned into flames of persecution to suit their ends. In registering protests against the persecution of minorities, no ruling class can do so with clean hands. It will be a world-wide Socialist movement that will finally put an end to all persecution, including the persecution of class by class. 

From an article by "S. R.", Socialist Standard, February 1943.

Obituary: Ernie Purkiss (1993)

Obituary from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We recently heard of the death of Ernie Purkiss last November on the Isle of Wight, where he spent his last few years. At the tender age of barely 14 he was given the job of cabin boy on the tramp steamer run to Buenos Aires. As this was in the mid-20s the conditions may well be imagined, bordering on Conrad and O'Neill as Ernie described them. This was to be his apprenticeship and in subsequent years he plied on more or less substandard shipping all over the world.

During the war he was given the dubious privilege of doing the Atlantic run. Having been torpedoed two or three times and once having spent four days in an open boat with little or no provisions before being quite fortuitously rescued he would always claim himself lucky not to have ended up in "Davy Jones’s Locker”. Finally he managed to persuade the authorities to release him from his duties as a merchant seaman, partly as a result of a severe ulcer no doubt originating from his tramp steamer days and its concomitant "food”. Soon after he joined the Party. A not unimportant factor in this was that his father was a member and no doubt made his socialist views telling. Add to this the miserable and dangerous life of a seaman and you have a socialist.

During his Party membership Ernie would always join in the activities involved, attending branch, indoor and outdoor meetings, selling the Socialist Standard, etc. During the enthusiastic post-war Paddington election campaign he was in the thick of it on a daily basis. Some years after the war he managed to get a "soft" job in the Port of London Authority. He openly made his socialist views known there despite the usual standard objections.

One of the great pleasures of his life was, always in the company of fellow socialists, doing countless regular hikes all over Kent. Sussex and Surrey. On many an occasion wrapped up in the heat of some discussion relating to the socialist case the way would be lost, but not the thread of the argument! The countryside represented an escape from the airlessness and concrete surrounds of the East End of London. On arriving in the open fields and woods he was wont to burst into Wordsworth's Paean to Nature which he had learnt by heart.

Although Ernie let his membership lapse in later years he never lost sight of the socialist point of view and its relevance to the deprivation, horrors and suffering imposed on humanity by capitalism.

Max Judd

50 Years Ago: Why Lord Nuffield Looks After the Workers (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

This solicitude for the welfare of the worker reminds us very much of the care which those capitalists who are interested in the turf lavish upon their racehorses. There are, of course, slight differences. A racehorse does not have to worry about making ends meet, about getting clothes for the children, about coupons or rations, or whether he will get a job when the war is over. In fact, he just doesn't do any worrying at all. There is another difference between the relationship of the worker and the racehorse to their common master. If a racehorse is no longer wanted, he can be sold, and perhaps eventually finish up in the knackers yard, and, in these days, as horse meat. But if a worker is no longer wanted, he is discharged, and sent about his business.

From an article by "Ramo" in Socialist Standard, April 1943. 

50 Years Ago: Contemptible Communist Propaganda Methods (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another illustration of Communist malice and irresponsibility is afforded by a letter received by our West Ham Branch from the West Ham Branch of the Communist Party. It arose out of a challenge to debate.

Here is the letter, a typical piece of Communist scurrility:—

The Communist Party has NO dealings with murderers, liars, renegades, or assassins.
  The S. P. G. B., which associates itself with followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British working class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyist saboteurs in the Soviet Union. They have worked to split the British working class, and are in short agents of Fascism in Great Britain.
 The C. P. G. B. refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed.
C. P. G. B West Ham Branch, J Barker, Secretary.

Needless to say. none of the charges in the letter are true or have even a semblance of basis in fact.

From a statement by the Executive Committee, Socialist Standard, May 1943.