So They Say: Yes, Who Does? (1974)

The So They Say Column from the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Yes, Who Does?

“Just who does make the decisions on housing — one of the most sensitive political issues in Britain?” asked Matthew Coady in the Sunday People's “Week in Politics” on 9th June.

He recalled the document “Better Homes — the Next Priorities” produced by the Heath government last year. Its “tough stuff” was not included in the Tory Housing Bill eight months later; and the Labour critic of their absence was Anthony Crosland MP. Coady went on:

   Mr. Crosland is now Britain’s housing supremo and has HE seized his chance to right these wrongs which so affronted him ?
   The answer, alas, is NO . . . Although it contains useful and welcome reforms, his new housing bill is not very different from that which the Tories sought to introduce early this year.

“So,” Coady demands, “WHO rules the roost on housing?”


Wrongs They Can't Right

“These wrongs” in the housing situation were emphasized in The Guardian. On 1st June it reported COUNCILS FEAR SLUMS MAY STAY ON:

   Local authorities with some of the worst housing stock in the country, fear that the Housing Action Areas planned by the Government may divert effort from slum clearance and rebuilding programmes which are essential for the future.

Attempts to solve one problem lead to another; but so do attempts to solve the other one. On 5th June the Guardian Planning Correspondent told that the five major city areas outside London — Tyneside, West Yorkshire, S.E. Lancashire, Merseyside and the West Midlands — in the twelve months up to March “demolished or closed 11,276 more slums and adjoining properties than they managed to build new”. She went on:

  This zeal to demolish cannot but have intensified the overall housing problem in each city. It comes on top of rising house prices which have put buying beyond the means of many average families, thus increasing the pressure and size of local waiting lists. Their hopes of council accommodation are in turn reduced by the need to rehouse families from the clearance areas.

And on 11th June it was HOUSE SLUMP GOES ON:

  The house building industry in Britain is sinking to its lowest level for 18 years. A Government survey estimates that only about 155.000 private houses will be started this year. The last time the figure was at this level — 30 per cent down on last year — was in 1958.

Obliged for the Answer

Socialists have always known the reason for the persistence of the housing problem. It is simply that capitalism produces things, including houses, not for people’s needs but only for profit. In case it is thought “experts” would dismiss this as a silly explanation, an “expert” has just said it is so. Writing about the finances of housing in the June issue of Property and Investment Review, Anthony Shiffley says:

   To appreciate the problems we must first clear our minds of certain pre-conceptions. First, and most important, we must rid ourselves of the notion that a house building company is some kind of fairy god-mother dispensing dwellings to meet the needs of the people. It is nothing of the kind. It is a purveyor of land on which in most, but not all cases houses have been built.

A Mote and Beam Story

According to the 8-volume History of the Second World War published by Purnell in 1966, 24,517,000 combatants on both sides were killed, of whom 452,000 came from Britain and the Commonwealth countries. It may be assumed that the number in the navy approached or ran into six figures.

So it was strange to see in the Sunday Mirror on 12th May an item on the shock and concern because a young sailor had died — through falling from a window — after seeing the horrific film “The Exorcist”. A picture showed navy policemen asking questions at a cinema, and a navy spokesman was reported:

   "Although there is no proof that the film had any connection with it, there are suggestions that it might have done.” He added: “The Navy does have responsibility for these young boys.”

Any young man’s death is a sad happening. But there seems to be a rum sense of proportion here.

Communists as Ever

The new regime in Portugal, following the coup on 25th April, announced on 9th June the establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia and Yugoslavia. In addition, according to a Guardian report, the Communist Party in Portugal has come into the open. The CP secretary-general, Dr. Alvaro Cunhal, is Minister without Portfolio in the new Cabinet and a Communist trade-union leader, Acelino Concalces, has become Labour Minister.

The Portuguese working class, specially the Left, no doubt looked forward to something good. Alvaro Cunhal quickly told them otherwise:

   Much to the dismay of Maoists and Trotskyites, who appear to be the party’s most vociferous enemies, he has appealed to workers to be responsible and cooperative in their demands for higher wages, pleading for a unified front between the people and the armed forces’ movement.

(Guardian, 10th June)

What is Portuguese for Plus ça change, plus ça reste la méme chose?

Pass the Pistol

In the 1929  depression tales were told of ruined American businessmen queueing to jump from high buildings. It is now reported from Japan:

   Hirozawa Toshikuni was Japan’s first business suicide of the financial new year . . .  In March three heads of small firms, capitalised at about £13,000, sought relief from bankruptcy in death. In that month, 1,306 firms folded: the largest number since May, 1968 — 500 to 600 bankruptcies is the monthly average.

(Guardian, 5th June)

The report says the suicide rate “is an indicator of the economy"—in particular, of the monetary squeeze which is the government’s attempted remedy for its share of the worldwide economic troubles. Less than two years ago, Japan’s spectacular growth led to its being called “the bullet economy”; the phrase seems to have taken another meaning now.

Nothing to do with Class

In an interview published in The Observer on 9th June, Prince Charles explained (i) that he was not at all confined to “a narrow circle” of friends; (ii) that he was "perfectly free” to marry outside royalty and aristocracy — “It’s nothing to do with class, it’s to do with compatibility”; (iii) that he had no preconceived ideas of special education for his future children, and (iv) that the Services had done for him “what they had done for thousands of other young men from every walk of life”.

Interviewed later at her parents’ home in Wolverhampton, Miss Ruby Glumm told of the Prince’s circle of friends. “He comes up the Bingo with my mum and Florry and me, and he’s ever so familiar with all the girls from the brawn factory where I work.” She confirmed the rumours of romance and the Prince’s freedom to marry as he liked, and said she would be calling on the vicar tomorrow on her way home from the pre-natal clinic. As for education, she referred to his remarks about the Services and said jovially: “I bet Crippen Street Secondary Modern can do for royal kids all it’s done for thousands round here.”

Robert Barltrop

The Problem of Production & Distribution (1973)

From the July 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

More than a century ago Karl Marx made two seemingly contradictory statements:

  It is not a fact that too many necessities of life are produced in proportion to the existing population. The reverse is true. Not enough is produced to satisfy the wants of the great mass decently and humanely . . . It is not a fact that too much wealth is produced. But it is true that there is periodical overproduction of wealth in its capitalistic and self-contradictory form.

(Capital, Vol. Ill, pp. 302-3)

The statements are not contradictory, and both of them are still true.

In the world as a whole and in the separate parts of it there are always masses of people not receiving enough “to satisfy wants . . . decently and humanely”. United Nations sources estimate that in “the developing nations” there are more than 1,000 million people on a desperately low standard of life, of “bare subsistence and sometimes starvation”, and in the industrialized countries, including the United Kingdom, there are large numbers of people on low wages, unemployment pay, pensions or social security payments insufficient to meet the cost of a decent, humane standard of living.

Moreover, as a continuing process, the production of the articles required by these hundreds of millions — food, clothing, shelter and so on — is not sufficient to meet their needs quite apart from the fact that they have not the money to buy what they lack. This is true in spite of the appearance from time to time and sometimes for longish periods of big stocks of goods held off the market; these stocks, to the extent that they are really surplus and not merely necessary reserves, would not be sufficient to supply the continuing massive deficiency.

How to Achieve Double

The periodic overproduction that Marx referred to, one of the inevitable contradictions of capitalism, was that in the normal — recurring — cycle of expansion, boom, crisis and stagnation there arises the phase of products being surplus to market needs because they cannot be sold at a profit. But by far the greatest defect inherent in capitalism is not that surpluses accumulate from time to time but that production itself is held back or halted without any regard to the fact that the unsatisfied needs of the human race are as great as ever. Much of the accumulation of stocks held off the market by companies (often encouraged by government policies) is due to the fall in demand in a depression caused by unemployment: the unsold stocks increase at the same time that the workers’ purchasing power is reduced.

The insufficiency of the wealth produced and the permanent deprivation of masses of the population is not due to inherent technical limitations on mankind’s powers of production. If it were not for the limitations imposed by capitalism the amount of wealth produced would always be greater, indeed very much greater, than it actually is; both a century ago when Marx wrote and at the present time.

Government spokesmen and economists are telling us that total production this year will be 6 per cent, greater than it was last year but that this unusually large growth cannot continue, even if all the output can find buyers, because factory capacity is being stretched to its limit and there is a growing scarcity of skilled workers for certain processes. But this scarcity of plant and of men to operate it is the result of the way capitalism works. Over the whole of the past six years there have been on average 750,000 men and women unemployed. If they had been allowed to work and to be trained there could now have been a much larger productive capacity already in existence.

This is, however, only a small part of the increase of the production of useful articles that could take place if capitalism was replaced by Socialism. Socialism would make it possible to increase the production of useful articles in two main ways; by utilizing the large numbers of able-bodied people not working at all, and by transferring to useful production all those workers now engaged on operations necessary only to capitalism — war and armament production, the armed services, financial, insurance and similar occupations. Overall it would be possible by these means to increase useful production to something like double the present level simply by revolutionizing the basis of the social system.

Mistaken Policy

When the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed near the beginning of the century to achieve this social revolution it was opposed by various reformist organizations which offered as an alternative the gradualist doctrine of relying on legislation and trade-union action to make continuing progress towards the abolition of poverty and inequality. As regards the concentration of ownership of accumulated wealth in the hands of the small capitalist minority, all their efforts have achieved practically nothing. They cannot claim that any of the social problems they promised to deal with — housing, unemployment, low wages — has in fact been remedied. At most it can be said that some of the worst aspects of poverty have been lessened.

They set themselves to bring about within the capitalist system the twofold objective of increasing the total production of wealth and of securing a less unequal distribution of it, and these two objectives are still at the forefront of their programmes. Distribution of income is somewhat less unequal than it was, though how much is due to the circumstances of British capitalism and how much to the specific efforts of the reformist organizations is a matter for conjecture.

But as regards total production of wealth, all there is to show is an annual increase averaging little more than 1 per cent, a year. In real terms, i.e. discounting the mere increase of prices, the total production of wealth in relation to a much larger population is now only about double what it was at the beginning of the century — an increase no larger than could have been achieved then by going over to a Socialist system of society. They have wasted seventy years.

Edgar Hardcastle

Wot no leader (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are wearily familiar with the bewildered reaction of people on first learning that our party has no leader. No leader!

Shock, incredulity, horror and finally amusement are among their emotions as they struggle to come to grips with this white blackbird, this finless fish or headless horse.

For never in his wildest nightmares did John Bull conceive of a society that was leaderless. Not even Walter Mitty— striding intrepidly, the only white man ever in that place, through the dense Brazilian jungle or across the burning sands of Arabian Deserts, when he found his way barred by hordes of dusky warriors—not even Walter Mitty could think of any formula more magically talismanic than “Take me to your leader!”

And one feels reasonably certain that if American or Russian spacemen landed on a planet where there was organic life and met a group of animate beings, they too would confidently demand, “Take us to your leader."

But to Socialists leaders are a useless anachronism, about as relevant to society’s present needs as the prophets of the Jews or early Christians, the witch-doctors of Africa or the oracles of Greece and Rome.

From a purely practical point of view, the Socialist sees many arguments against leadership. It is undemocratic in principle; it is unhelpful in the task of arousing class consciousness and a sense of the dignity and strength of the working class; it therefore tends to demoralise the “rank and file” and leads to a spirit of competition rather than co-operation; it can also be a direct cause of factionalism, intrigues and splits caused by personal ambition and group rivalry developing into hostility . . . All these points can easily be illustrated by examples from British history within one’s own lifetime.

Another way in which the leadership cult can be detrimental to a political party is due to the leader’s “charismatic” personality being identified with his party’s policy. Thus the public, learning of the "deplorable” private life of the Irish leader, Parnell, threw the baby out with the bathwater—rejecting the policy along with the personality.

Even if the leader leads a blameless life, has courage and intelligence, is unbribeable and unbreakable, his opponent has only to put him in jail or an early grave, for his party to suffer a crippling blow. Thus, to take a recent example, when the charismatic East Pakistan leader, Mujibur Rahman, was interned in March, his party (Awami League) reacted for a long time like the legendary headless hen: it ran in circles and went through the motions but was in fact dead from the neck up.

What is worse than a bad leader is surely a good leader. We need neither.

What we do want is the support of intelligent men and women the world over, committed to destroying the rotten fabric of capitalist society, not patching the old threadbare curtain of fraud and exploitation any more but tearing it from the window to let the clear light of a new day shine through, exposing in stark reality the squalor and misery, famines and wars, bigotry and xenophobia, and other prize exhibits of this twentieth century Chamber of Horrors.

Let us see the leaders too as mere painted waxworks and tailors’ dummies, propped up to simulate life before the TV cameras: a pantheon of heroes for spellbound children to gawp at. But, to quote an earlier writer, now we arc grown-up and have put away childish things. So we can and must decide our political destiny for ourselves, taking full responsibility on our own shoulders and not leaving the burden of decision to selected individuals. For the "leader" is no better than his flock and may well be a good deal worse. As Oscar Wilde observed, "The Americans are certainly great hero-worshippers, and they always take their heroes from the criminal classes".

Leadership, hero-worship and élitism are contrary to the democracy of the Socialist movement, incompatible with the egalitarian nature of a Socialist society and are utterly inimical to the mass movement of class-conscious workers to abolish the old privilege-ridden society.

Charmian Skelton

The McMasters (1971)

Film Review from the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The McMasters (Directed by Alf Kjellin.)

Benjie, a negro, returns after four years civil-warring on the side of the North to the ranch of his adopted father, McMaster in the deep south.

McMaster (Burl Ives) is the only one to offer a welcome, since Benjie’s blue uniform is resented in the Bible-thumping, Reconstruction — pulverised, poverty stricken, secessionist, racist cattle community.

Benjie gets half the ranch from McMaster, who realises he is past managing it alone. The ranch hands leave in disgust. Benjie saves some half-starved Indians from a lynching for cattle-rustling, and offers them work which they accept. Benjie’s generosity to his employees is partly fired by his realisation that he himself is, to the hostile community, scum like the Indians: "Everyone knows them niggers aint people— they aint got souls”, is how the town storekeeper justifies riding with the local Ku Klux Klan, and brainwashes his young son, who already longs to watch his first lynching.

Benjie gets an Indian squaw as "a gift"(!) from the tribe of grateful wage-slaves. Finally Benjie’s incongruous landowner status, his bloody defence of his cattle from salt-poisoning Klansmen, his marriage in the white man’s church to his squaw, his new found self-respect and refusal to be intimidated into selling-out drive the local Klan, led by Gilby, (Jack Palance) the confederate war-hero embittered by the loss of his arm, to attempt to lynch him. The first attempt ‘only’ gets Benjie’s wife, Robin, raped and two Klansmen killed before they are driven off the ranch.

The cattle season over, Benjie realises that with the Indians who have returned to their village, he and McMaster will be unable to protect the ranch or his wife in the event of further brawls. He sends Robin back to her tribe for safety, and tries to enlist the aid of the Indians but the tribal elders make it clear that Benjie is in their eyes the same as the whites, who, as property owners will spill blood for it, and they want no part in a property war . . . "The land belongs to no-one—you like us Benjie, you homeless”.

The inevitable showdown with the Klan follows—a burning cross is the signal for a bloodthirsty finale in which McMaster is shot dead, the ranch buildings are razed and Benjie himself is only saved from a coldblooded burning by the inexplicable intervention of the younger Indian braves—his former employees—led by the articulate primitive communist ideologist, brother of Benjie’s wife. Gilby is killed, the Klan are temporarily routed, but after Benjie recovers from his wounds at the Indian village, to the complete bewilderment of Robin’s brother he once again staggers back to rebuild his smallholding, to face the Klan and probable death with Robin.

Robin’s brother's cries ring out as the film closes: "You’re crazy Benjie, you got no home, you like us, you got no home”. . . but Benjie, pathetically mesmerised by his title deeds, already has his values fixed—property before his own, his friends, his wife, his Indian brothers’ lives.

All in all, a film expressing all the contradictions of the class and caste-ridden society of post civil war America. The Indian elders alone attract sympathy, with their humanism and refusal to sacrifice themselves for property. But they, one senses, are doomed to an ever-more precarious nomadic existence and probable extinction from starvation (despite their rustling activities) or from epidemic.

The film will appeal to all those who flock to watch ketchup being spilled in great quantities, who are titillated and thrilled by the depiction of inexorable violence. The stark scenes in it are overtly commercial. No relief from the all-pervading atmosphere of brutalising and dehumanising 1865 Bible Belt Society is offered, indeed the producer seems to want us to project the despair into the present day. Certainly no relief is realistically possible in the historical context of absolute scarcity and the dominance of property, status and compensatory racialist ideas do not lend themselves to any. But a hundred years later scarcity is a myth; competition and the hostility, mutual suspicion, atomization and savagery it engenders are archaic and unnecessary; the Benjies of the world need no longer cling to tangibles at such a cost; the day of the Indian is near again, at a much higher and more secure level of technology and culture.

C. H.

50 Years Ago: On Socialism in Russia (1970)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we are told that socialism has been obtained in Russia without the long, hard and tedious work of educating the mass of the workers in Socialism, we not only deny it, but refer our critics to Lenin’s own confessions. His statements prove that even though a vigorous and small minority may be able to seize power for a time, they can only hold it by modifying their plans to suit the ignorant majority.

The folly of adopting Bolshevik methods here is admitted by Lenin in his pamphlet ‘The Chief Task of Our Times’ (Page 10) ‘A backward country can revolt quickly, because its opponent is rotten to the core, its middle class is not organised; but in order to continue the revolution a backward country will require immediately more circumspection, prudence and endurance. In Western Europe it will be quite different: there it will be much more difficult to begin “but it will be much easier to go on. This cannot be otherwise because there the proletariat is better organised and more closely united".

We have often stated that because of a large anti-socialist peasantry and vast untrained population, Russia was a long way from Socialism. Lenin has now to admit this by saying: -

  "Reality says that State Capitalism would be a step forward for us: if we were able to bring about State Capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us”.

(From an article "A Socialist View of Bolshevist Policy” by Adolf Kohn in the Socialist Standard, July 1920.)

Darkness at Noon (1969)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Party of Great Britain, like Tennyson’s immortal brook, seems to go on and on forever. Brooks, however, can normally be relied upon to follow a predetermined course with some consistency; this is outside the capabilities of the Communist Party. This can be assumed from the latest edition of The British Road to Socialism, a remarkable document in which the CP sets out to woo the workers with the glorious principles of Reform. Not that this is a new technique; the Communist Party has never advocated anything other than a few petty alterations to the existing social system, capitalism.

This pamphlet, however, does include one or two new features, or, more precisely, new details of old ideas.

It is not necessary here to record an endless list of “policies” along these lines; anyone willing to pay the Communist Party piper for the modest sum of two and sixpence can call any tune he could possibly wish for, ranging from the Balance of Payment Blues to the Social Security Symphony, and even the Technology Tango. No longer need any worker feel left out of the CP’s plans—every prejudice is catered for. Should you disagree with any of the “policies”, don’t despair; Communist Party promises change regularly.

Out of so much trash only one fact emerges which is relevant to Socialists and the interests of the workers, namely, that the "Communists” are no more concerned with Communism or Socialism than are the Labourites or Tories. They still see Communism and Socialism as being different systems, a throw-back to the days when the CP in Britain acted exclusively as a foreign agent to the Russian ruling class, and was obliged to echo well-known libertarians like Stalin, who excused the brutalities of the day with the “means to an end” argument. Page seventeen contains the disquieting intelligence that Russia is still a “Socialist State”; this means, probably, that the type of life “enjoyed” by workers there is an insight into lives of workers in Britain should the CP ever come to power.

David Ramsay Steele

Obituary: Ernest Jesper (1967)

Obituary from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the death of Ernest Jesper of the Birmingham Branch. He died at his home on Friday 5th May 1967 at the age of 84 years.

Our comrade was a founder member of the Birmingham Branch having joined the Party on 26th May 1909. During the years between the wars he became a mainstay of the Birmingham Branch and was Secretary when the Branch was forced to discontinue its activities at the outbreak of World War II. Ernest Jesper had furthered the knowledge of the members by the many talks he gave on developments of History, a subject in which he specialised. Unfortunately advancing years had curtailed his activities, but his enthusiasm remained unchanged. Sympathy is extended to his family.

L. Y.

Obituary: Our Comrade Bowie (1967)

Obituary from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are sorry to learn that another old member of the Party passed away on 24th February. Our comrade Bowie was a member of the Southend Branch. He joined the Party in 1928, was active up till his death, and was a delegate for his branch to Conferences and Delegate meetings for many years. He was also their very efficient Treasurer.

Soon after the last war, Southend Branch considered putting forward a candidate for the General Election and he was their prospective candidate. Although they ran an active campaign and Bowie did a considerable amount of speaking, lack of funds prevented them from finally nominating him.

At one time a summer school was held at his home in East Wakering at which members and visitors were encouraged to take part in discussions about Socialism. He was keen on canvassing, always carried Party literature about with him and put the case for Socialism to everyone with whom he came into contact.

A curious expression of his intensive interest in the propagation of Socialism is the fact that he named his bungalow “Mareng" as abbreviation of Marx and Engels.

The passing away of old members like him leaves a gap and are a sad loss to the Party. We extend to his relatives our sincere sympathy and we very much regret the loss of such a stalwart supporter of the Party.

Gilmac.

Don't say you weren't warned (1966)

From the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many who voted the Labour Government into power in 1964 and with a much increased majority earlier this year are wondering if they did the right thing. They knew what they wanted: steady or lower prices; higher wages, shorter hours and longer holidays; more houses, lower rents and mortgage charges; bigger pensions and sick benefits, and, of course, no unemployment. Obviously not extravagant demands because all the leaders, Labour, Tory and Liberal, promised much the same things. How could the voters lose, whichever way they voted? But in the event the majority decided that Wilson was the man to do it.

Now the voters are not so sure. They read the Labour Party election manifesto promising a 25 per cent rise in living standards in the next five years and many of them (including, of course, the seamen) cannot understand why the glowing promise turns into a Government refusal to concede more pay and shorter hours in the merchant ships and the threatened use of Emergency Powers against the strikers. They also see that most of the other promises have gone into oblivion. Almost the only favourable sign is that unemployment has so far continued at a low level.

But perhaps the present troubled state of affairs is just a passing phase and before the end of the year all will be well? ,

There are indeed signs of change before the year is out, but according to a report in the Observer on June 5 it is likely to be a freeze on prices and wages.

In the previous week a story was leaked to the Press (put out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer according to one view, though it is denied) that if the seamen’s strike continued the Government intended to take drastic action in the form of a “freeze”.

The leading article in the Observer added its own interpretation of Government tactics.

  The Government seems almost deliberately to be encouraging the Machiavellian explanation of its attitude to the seamen’s strike: that it half-welcomed this dispute as a pretext for tough and unpleasant economic measures which the Labour Party would otherwise find difficult to swallow. Already private hints are being dropped—accompanied by public denials—that as a result of the strike, and particularly if it ends in a messy compromise, the Government may have to introduce a wage freeze.

That fact is that the Government’s “incomes policy by persuasion” is in ruins. The increase of production in the still-born National Plan has not taken place, exports and imports have not adjusted themselves and foreigners holding pounds sterling are as jumpy as ever about the prospects of devaluation. So what will the Government do? Impose a freeze? Or let things take their course and rely on a few hundred thousand unemployed to help to keep wages down?

We can be quite sure of one thing. The Labour Government which took office to “put things right” will blame the workers for the failure. The magician who can’t produce the rabbits out of the hat will lay the blame on the audience!

It is an old story, repeated in every Labour Government here and elsewhere. It was told first when the Labour Government came into office in 1929. One Minister, J. H. Thomas, addressing the National Union of Railwaymen, of which he had been General Secretary, told them: “We ask you not to expect too much, nor attempt to force from us, because we are a Labour Government, what you would not force from a capitalist government.”

By “Capitalist government” Thomas meant Liberal or Tory, but from the working class point of view it is a distinction without a difference. We live under capitalism whether administered by Tory, Liberal or Labour, and capitalism operates through profit. It is therefore the function of all governments to enable profit to be made. With enough unemployment to put a brake on wages the government need take no special steps, but when unemployment is too low attention turns to an “incomes policy” to do the trick.

Has something gone wrong that the workers should be faced with this dilemma? Would another government be any better?

Nothing has gone wrong. This is capitalism running true to form. This is the way capitalism works.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, at and between every general election, points to the way out by replacing capitalism with Socialism. All those who chose capitalism by voting Labour, Tory, Liberal (or Communist) have only themselves to thank. They have got what they voted for.

Edgar Hardcastle

Abertillery (1965)

From the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abertillery is said to be the constituency with the largest percentage of Socialist voters in the country. If only it were! Certainly the Labour Party has dominated the area for over 30 years but that’s a different matter altogether.

Labourism came to the mining valleys of Wales, in one of which is Abertillery, through the activities of the Independent Labour Party before the first world war. In South Wales, with over one hundred branches, the ILP was the leading light of the popular Social Reform movement which arose from the miseries and indignities the miners had to suffer. After a period of pre-war “Lib-Labism” all the mining constituencies fell to the Labour Party, which by 1922 had become the largest party in Wales.

The local councils too came under Labour control in this period. The Labour and ILP pioneers were at least sincere —although confused—men and women. Some had a very adequate knowledge of capitalist society and were well-versed in the theories of Marx. Today’s Labour people are of a different calibre.

For over thirty years the Labour Party has controlled the local councils of the area; only in the last ten years have they been opposed at election time. Many Labour candidates are still returned unopposed. The fact that the South Wales coalfield is a one-party area has had its inevitable effects on the Labour Party. Today in this area it has ceased to be even a sincere, if confused, popular movement for Social Reform and has become an organization for running the local government machine—right from the selection of councillors to administering the Water Boards.

The old pioneers with their idealism have disappeared and a new generation has taken over. The new men—the councillors, the county councillors, the aldermen, the JP’s—who include the Labour MP, Alderman Clifford Williams JP, still speak the language of the pioneers. In the past by-election they have freely talked of Socialism and said they were Socialists. They have described their party as that of the people against the property-owners. They have declared that the forces of wealth are trying to smash the Labour Movement (if that’s not pure rhetoric what is?). Financiers have been called mad dogs. It’s the sort of language that would make the slick efficiency boys who are remodelling the Labour Party’s image throw up their hands in despair. But they needn’t worry; it goes down well. It’s doubtful if these people really know what the words they uttered originally meant. In any case it is an open question who are more despicable: the arrogant councillors mouthing the phrases of the Labour pioneers or those who don’t attempt to disguise the fact that they have capitulated to capitalism completely.

It is often said that the working class have a short memory. Certainly there are many grounds for such a conclusion but the working class of the mining valleys of Wales remember alright. They remember what the Labour candidate described as “the dark, desperate years” of 1920-1939 which were years of “misery, want and privation During this period the mining communities did suffer—from the attacks on their living standards by the coal-owners and from the unemployment and destitution of the years of the great depression.

At one end of the valley, where the Abertillery constituency is, lies the mining village of Nantyglo which in English means “coal valley”; today there are some eight pits in the constituency. Indeed Abertillery may well be the constituency with the highest percentage of miners on the register in South Wales, perhaps even higher than in the more famous Rhondda valley further west. The proportion is not what it used to be and an increasing number of workers are employed in nearby steelworks and factories. Nevertheless the mining tradition is dominant.

Unfortunately, Abertillery’s remembering of the past has taken the form of an unshakeable faith that the Labour Party is their Party and has their interests at heart. Nothing the Labour Party has done, or is doing, seems to shake this faith. Questioned over Vietnam, Alderman Williams said that as the Labour Party was “dedicated to peace” it must be right in what ever it was doing over the matter — and the audience cheered! On another occasion he declared that the Labour government had reduced the arms bill by £50m—and nobody questioned him.

The Conservative Party in an area such as this is in a hopeless position. The few thousand professional and tradespeople who make up its support are not organised to present a challenge to the Labour Party save at national elections—and then their election machine is manned mainly by outsiders. In between such elections the Conservative Party ceases to exist, though in recent years those who vote Conservative have been organising themselves into so-called “Independents' Associations” to contest local elections.

Nowadays the real political opposition to the Labour Party locally comes from Plaid Cymru, the nationalist party. Surprisingly, Plaid Cymru has been making headway in the mining valleys of Wales—they have councillors in Merthyr (which was Keir Hardie’s seat) and in the Rhondda, once the home of Noah Abblett and the syndicalists who wrote The Miners’ Next Step. This may be a sign that a political change is coming to these valleys after decades of one-party Labour domination.

The fourth political party operating in the area, the Communist Party, did not contest the by-election. The South Wales coalfield is one of the few areas where the so-called Communist Party has acquired a few seats on the local councils. However most of their councillors have been elected by Labour voters for multi-member wards. In the by-election campaign, an attempt was made to smear the Labour candidate by claiming that he was a Communist Party member or supporter in the 1930’s.

Whoever started this rumour was obviously unaware of political conditions in the mining valleys of South Wales; even if it had been true it would have helped rather than hindered the Labour candidate. For the Communist Party, by being militant trade unionists in the NUM, have earned the respect of many miners—the nickname “commo” has exactly the opposite connotation to the American one “commie". What support the Communist party has won has not been so much on its "principles" as on its trade unionism. Thus it is more a trade union pressure group than a gang of Russian nationalists like the CP in the industrial towns.

Adam Buick

Flights of Fancy (1964)

Book Review from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Keepers of the Slaughterhouse, by Walter Gore. Mitre Press, 14s.

This book consists of two short stories—“Novellas” the publisher calls them —which are “. . . addressed to all those who think that fundamental problems may be settled, once and for all, by the application of violence.” The theme of the first story is not new. The world has become divided into two massive armed camps, each under the domination of a military clique although ostensibly governed democratically. Eventually they go to war and the result is the obliteration of the human race by nuclear weapons. Not quite, though, because somehow about six dozen people manage to survive on one or two islands miles from anywhere, and start the painful job of reconstructing their lives and the rebuilding of humanity.

Well, it is a distinct possibility. The destructive power of nuclear bombs is massive, but in putting the proposition, the author has ignored some rather important facts. First of all, the military do not exist as a separate entity, answerable to no one but themselves. The capitalist class of this and other major powers have long ago brought the armed forces firmly under governmental control. Even the popular General Macarthur found this when he urged the use of atomic warfare against China during the Korean War and was promptly recalled by President Truman.

Then again, never has the fate of the world depended on the maniacal whims of a single man (Field Marshal Van. Rogen, Chief of Staff of one of the armed camps in the story), and there is no evidence to suggest that it ever will be, never mind the contrary propaganda with which we have been assailed from time to time when it suited our masters. Admittedly a short story cannot cover every point, but Mr. Gore has left far too many gaps in his narrative for us to take it all that seriously. The prospect of any war, big or little, nuclear or conventional, is a horrifying one, but when we have said this we have not said anything very original. Modern war is capitalist society in conflict, not just a few high-ranking, trigger-happy brasshats in the Pentagon or Kremlin. If the author could even have hinted at that, his book would have been of more value.

His second story is a bit more off the ground than the first. A sort of modern Noah’s Ark tale. A space expedition reaches a far distant planet and finds a form of conscious plant life. That is to say, the beings have similar shaped bodies and move around just like humans, but are constructed of plant matter, not animal protein. It is an entirely non violent society yet it plans to destroy the human race, which is regarded as a threat to its existence. So the space travellers hurry back to earth to warn us of the approaching disaster.

Quite honestly, we find it hard to take any part in this one seriously, despite vaguely expressed ideas earlier on about “international cooperation’’ and “world government." The write-up on the dust cover assures us of the author’s ' . . . numbing bitterness against the social forces around him, awakening to the discovery that if man is to cope with those forces he must first carefully study their nature." Fine. But what is their nature? Socialists have grasped the answer to that one. and we gladly offer Mr. Gore the benefit of what knowledge we have, for we realise the vital urgency of the task before us. First of all, however, let us keep our mental rockets firmly in orbit, and not lose control of them in far off flights of fancy.

Eddie Critchfield

Letter From Jamaica (1963)

From the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One year after the achievement of Independence, it is worthwhile spending a few moments looking at the situation in Jamaica and Trinidad. Local politicians have been telling us for many years that the Colonial riders were the stumbling block on the road to progress. Now, a year after this stumbling block has been removed, how much nearer are we to the Promised Land?

In Jamaica it is certainly still far beyond the horizon. The army of 80,000 unemployed is larger than in the days of colonial rule and is increasing day by day. Instead of creating new jobs, several firms have closed down. During the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, a march was organised by the unemployed demanding food and jobs—stressing that “charity begins at home.” At the last moment the march was banned by the Government and, when it took place in spite of the ban, was followed by armed police patrols—demonstrating that, whether Colonial or Independent, Governments represent the interests of the capitalist class and will ruthlessly use their power to suppress any working-class protest

Very slowly, and too late, workers are beginning to realise that Independence; for them, has brought about no change for the better, but rather the reverse. They have learnt that their rulers—like those in all other countries which fought for and won their independence—tell them that, now that their country “belongs to them,” they must work harder, produce more, refrain from going on strike, etc. It could, of course, be added that although the workers must work harder and be satisfied with less, this does not seem to apply to our political leaders who do little to justify their place in society but get themselves photographed at as many cocktail parties as possible (for a politician to be photographed constantly with a glass in his hand, is no disadvantage here!)

Jamaica is now going through the same phase as other newly independent nations, who never anticipated the consequences of their independence. One would think that the position is clear enough for the workers to see. There is no future worth having for mankind under Capitalism. It cannot be reformed, it cannot be toned down or made to work in the interests of the working class. The only cure for Capitalism is its abolition. Socialism is the only logical next phase in human society; and by Socialism we do not mean the systems masquerading under that title in Cuba, Russia and elsewhere, but the joining of hands of all the workers of the world in co-operation, to produce and partake of the wealth of the world.

The farce of Independence is becoming clear to more and more workers in Jamaica. However, when the next election comes, will they realise the root cause of their troubles? I doubt it. However, we few Socialists in Jamaica hope to be strong enough in numbers by then to put before the working class of Jamaica the only road for them, and the workers of the rest of the world, to follow.

Yours for Socialism,

George Dolphy.

Editorial: The Ghost Walks Again (1962)

Editorial from the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our capitalists have seen a ghost, a ghost they had thought banished for ever, the ghost of 1929. It showed itself only for a moment, just long enough to revive terrible memories and turn optimism and complacency into fear and uncertainty.

The Chairman of the London Stock Exchange, with true British stolidity, denied that there was anything like panic. But the Americans have not been nearly so reticent and are quite ready to admit that at one stage on that horrible Monday only a hairsbreadth separated them from panic. Not for years were there such scenes on Wall Street, the ticker tape falling behind by 34 minutes at one point with prices dropping catastrophically. Although according to a correspondent of the Economist there was a wider price swing in 1955 when President Eisenhower had his heart attack, never since 1933 had so many small investors tried to get out of the market all at once.

The economic experts, so-called, have naturally been hard at work telling us all about it. The hacks were in right away discounting fears that it might be another 1929 and doing their best to keep up flagging spirits. Some of them were even describing the next day’s partial recovery as a boom. More sober assessments were being made by the end of the week, though they did not add much more to our knowledge than the wilder fancies earlier. Some blamed the crash on the small investor, others on President Kennedy’s recent harsh line with the U.S. steel companies, others comforted themselves with the thought that it had given a much needed shake-out to the market and that things would be healthier for it. But, even more than usual, none of them seemed willing or anxious to commit reputations to anything more than vague speculation.

It is, of course, the easiest thing in the world to read too much into stock market fluctuations. A fall in share prices, even a violent one, is in itself no indicator of a slump. The 1929 depression is superficially remembered by the Wall Street crash, but it was not caused by this. The crash was only the dramatic culmination of complicated economic forces that had been working themselves out for some time before. Thus the recent events on the world’s stock exchanges do not add up to a slump nor do they indicate necessarily that one is on the way. They are essentially the reflection of the present economic state of world Capitalism, in particular of American Capitalism.

After seventeen years of comparative prosperity, brought about largely by the need to make good the destruction of war and by the huge expenditure on preparations for another, the momentum is now slowing down. Goods are getting harder to sell, profit margins are having to be cut, and many industries are working well below capacity. The confident assumption that things were automatically going to get better was in fact already being questioned before the recent big break. It should not be forgotten that there had been a similar severe fall on Wall Street only a few weeks before and that the share price index had been dropping steadily for some months before then. It is against this background that we must look for the significance of the crash

Although basically reflecting the economic forces of Capitalism, the stock exchanges can, of course, react upon those forces in turn. It is almost certain, for example, that the recent shock has put paid to the belief of the Capitalists that prosperity was going to go on and on. On the other hand, it could just as easily convince them that things are actually going to get worse and thus help tilt the downward trend into a real slump.

The really interesting thing is to see the reactions of the Capitalist class and their advisers to the crash. In spite of all the talk about how Capitalism can be controlled, about how much has been learned about its workings since 1929, about Keynesian planning and the rest of it, they have been really shocked and frightened. They have seen a ghost they thought they had theorised into disappearing.

And they are not at all sure that their theories will be enough to prevent it coming back again.

Election Manifesto (1961)

From the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Extract from the Election Address of the World Socialist Party of Ireland, Duncairn Ward, Belfast.

HOUSING

There have been innumerable Acts of Parliament aimed at ending the workers' housing problems; the Unionists have tried their way and we have the record of Labour parties in Britain and other countries. Yet homelessness and slum-dwelling have become an accepted thing in our society. House building, like every other productive activity under capitalism. is pursued for the purpose of profit-making, human needs are as nothing beside the great god profit. No party will solve the problem of bad and insufficient homes while profit remains the accepted system of social organisation. Only in Socialism, where production of all things, including homes, is solely for the satisfaction of people's needs, is a solution to be found.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Why are the unemployment figures getting greater every day? Certainly not because everyone has a sufficiency of the things workers produce, or can produce. Unemployment is just another permanent feature of a buying-and-selling capitalist society. As we have demonstrated, the capitalists employ the workers solely for the purpose of profit-making; if there is no markets wherein the things that the workers produce can be sold and profit realised, then workers are laid off. In Socialism, where human needs will be the only factor governing production, when a point is reached at which a sufficiency of all things has been produced. it will simply mean more leisure time for the producers without the attendant hardships of today.

"THE BORDER"

This is a question that the politicians use in all elections to good purpose. The World Socialist Party maintains that the so-called Border is yet another expression of our present society, and we as members of the working class neither gain nor lose by its removal or retention. The problems of the workers North and South of the border are similar and are not caused by the geographical Border, but by a division much more evil in its effects—the class border between us of the working class, who produce everything and own nothing, and the capitalists, who produce nothing and own everything. This is the “Border” Socialists wish to abolish.

The Belfast Campaign (1961)

Party News from the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the object of creating opportunities for propaganda activities, bringing the name and object of the Party into prominence and demonstrating that they were not just another “left ” group, the Belfast Branch of the W.S.P. of Ireland decided to contest a ward in the Belfast Municipal Election. The deposit for nomination of candidate was £25. Though the Branch realised that they would lose their deposit, they considered the resulting propaganda would justify the expenditure.

They contested Duncairn Ward, as it was only in this ward that they had enough members to sign the nomination paper. It is a very thickly populated ward but not particularly suited to their purpose.

Voting locally is restricted to the occupier of a house and wife. Families living in dwellings that are sub-let, and adults other than the occupier and wife, are denied the right to vote. On the other hand a “property” vote enables businessmen and company directors, with branches or diverse business interests, to vote as many as eight times.

There is no free election postage in Ireland. Consequently the small group of Belfast comrades had to name and address the ten thousand Election Statements, and deliver them to houses over an area of 16 to 18 square miles. This was a colossal task, which took well into each morning, after holding meetings in the area during the evening and night. Their opponents contented themselves with touring the constituency with music, processions led by bunting-bedecked lorries, and loud-speaker exhortations telling people how to vote.

Every night, in spite of bad weather, a number of meetings were held. The first meetings were accompanied by three car-loads of police, motor cycle police, and several police on foot. Eventually it was reduced to a single motor cycle policeman. Places were visited where opposition was usually violent, but only once was a voice raised in anger against us.

When polling day arrived our comrades were astonished to find that the W.S.P. candidate had polled 824 votes — 11.4 per cent of the total votes cast. They also saved their deposit.

At the conclusion of the poll the W.S.P. candidate made the following statement:

   "The Unionist and Labour Parties represent capitalism and the continued exploitation of the working class . . . this is an historic occasion; for the first time capitalism in both disguises has been challenged . . .  we are at the bottom of the hill, you are at the top, but we are ascending, you are retreating down the other side."

The fact that there were 824 votes (the bulk of whom may not yet be socialists), in one ward in such a conservative area as Belfast, is a harbinger of the progress of enlightenment. In their literature and from the platform, the Belfast members urged voters only to vote for Socialism if they understood it and wanted it, as outlined in the Election Address.

We congratulate our Irish comrades on the tremendous and self-sacrificing effort they put in with such good results, (t augurs well for the progress of the socialist movement in Ireland, and is heartening to their comrades in other lands.