Editorial: Socialist face of democracy (1985)

Editorial from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is more — or perhaps we should say less — to the annual conferences of the capitalist political parties than is dreamed of in the razzamatazz of their speeches, orations. voting, receptions and banquets. More — or less — than is to be found in the toadying reports of the media, which insist that what goes on in those seaside halls has some special significance for the working class.

One function of the conferences is to be exercises in public relations (although they have been known to backfire on this score) with speeches timed and measured so as to get maximum coverage in the newspapers and on television. Sometimes the exercise is helped along by a stroke of luck, like Labour's in 1963 when the blatant Tory infighting over the succession to the ailing and battered Macmillan was followed by their own conference posture as the party too busy planning a great future for the British people to immerse themselves in such petty squabbling. Last year, the Tories had the luck when the Brighton bomb, intended to wipe out much of the Cabinet, actually helped revive the government's flagging popularity.

So what are these conferences about? The Tories offer no illusions: their gatherings have only an advisory role and whatever resolutions they carry, the leadership which at present, of course, is the British government — do not need to take any account of them. Naturally, the leadership is happier if the conference avoids embarrassing them and if the impression is given of a warm unity but in any case they rarely have much difficulty in snuffing out any glimmers of dissent. Conservatives seem happy with this, for each year they travel to their conferences in full expectation of participating in numerous standing ovations, for even the most commonplace of speeches, as if prolonged applause is a duty they owe the party. The conferences are also used for publicity-catching statements of policy, or bold defiance of the realities of capitalism. Thatcher's speeches, with their newsworthy slogans, are one example of this-, another was Leon Brittan's promise in 1983 to effectively lengthen the sentences of prisoners who have been convicted of certain types of offences. This speech was rapturously received by the party's hangers and floggers, who left the hall positively flushed with the excitement of an assuaged punishment-lust.

The Labour Party have to pretend that their conferences are different. Many of their members may actually believe (if we are to judge from the excitement they evince at the results of their votes) that their decisions carry some weight and are able to change things. To give just one recent example: a conference vote in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament convinces the delegates that a Labour government will throw away the British bomb. There is no evidence to support this notion. Even the constitutional changes the Labour Party made a few years ago did not alter the fact that a Labour government of the future will have to act just like those in the past — they will run British capitalism in the interests of its ruling class and. therefore, to the despair of many members of the Labour Party.

The reasons for this are plain. Members of the capitalist parties are not socialists. Some in the Labour Party may describe themselves as socialist but under the thinnest of political skins they are in fact supporters of capitalism. Faced with the socialist proposition of a moneyless society of common ownership in the means of production, of free access to wealth and equal social standing, they may agree that this is a desirable object — but only in the very, very long term. Meanwhile, they must devote their efforts to the futile task of reforming capitalism — which includes passing seductive, meaningless resolutions at their conference.

The membership of the capitalist parties are firmly in support of the leadership principle; they believe their party must be run by a group of people who have a privileged access to information which is concealed from the majority and who hand down decisions and policies for the rest to carry out. Devotion to reformism means support for expediency, of opportunistic response to day-by-day events.

In contrast, the socialist movement presents a comprehensively valid analysis of society. Socialist parties are different because, most importantly, they consist exclusively of workers who have seen exposed, and who have rejected, the futility of reformism and the leadership principle. A socialist party is made up of conscious socialists, who understand capitalism and how socialism will remove the problems of present-day society. They know that nothing less than a democratic socialist revolution will do. Such political consciousness is the death-knell of leadership, for leaders are redundant in the presence of workers who are politically alive.

This gives the conferences of socialist parties an unusual character. First of all, they are fully democratic; from the earliest call for items to be discussed to the final vote the conferences express the wishes of the party membership. The business of our conferences is carried out by members who are strictly mandated by the branches and whose work is subjected to a rigorous vigilance. Unlike the other parties who claim to be socialist, there is no confusion among us about the nature of socialism, nor about the urgent need for an immediate revolution. These facts give our conferences a distinct flavour; they are not occasions for a dominating clique of leaders, or a dictatorial platform. Any worker who doubts these facts can come to a socialist conference to see for themselves.

Which brings us to our final point, our final distinction. All socialist conferences, and all our meetings of whatever kind, are completely open to anyone who wants to attend. We do not know the practice of withdrawing into a secret session to discuss some issue which we are afraid to let see the light of day. We know that an organisation which has secrets, which reserves some of its information to an exclusive élite , cannot be democratic and cannot therefore be socialist.

So any worker who is concerned about the perilous condition of human society and who is weary and disillusioned with the remedies offered by the capitalist parties should consider the alternative of the socialist movement. We are free and democratic and our members stand as equals because that is how it will be in the socialist society which we are organised to bring into being

Running Commentary: Death throes? (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death throes?

As the killings in South Africa continue, the question must be — is this apartheid's last spasm of life?

Prime Minister Botha is faced with a massive problem. On the one hand the system of racial discrimination which his government is pledged to maintain and to develop into the establishment of separate states for blacks and whites is clearly in conflict with the demands of South Africa's expanding capitalist economy. A recent report by a quasi-governmental body condemned apartheid as obsolete and warned of the need for the government to act positively in the matter in the near future. According to some reports. Botha himself is aware that this is true.

This reality is slowly being accepted among even sections of the Afrikaaner population, which is a developing section of the capitalist class, impatient with the obstacles which apartheid must place in the way of profitability. Concessions have already been made and more must follow soon; in particular the government may recognise the need for an authentic negotiator for the Africans.

But the very concession of reforms, such as the recognition of black trade unions, the abolition of the ban on inter-racial marriage and sex and the plans to give South African citizenship to the blacks, can itself be a weakening factor for the government. This is all too obvious to some National Party supporters, who view Botha's attempted appeasement of the protest movement with angry contempt and who may turn their support to even more extreme racist policies in an effort to stem the tide of reform. So Botha is trying to ride a tiger — the ferocious animal of racist bigotry which his party whipped into action in the first place.

The situation now is that, paradoxically, many South African capitalists have political views described as to the "left" of the government. For the South African white workers. this is a time for decisions which their bigotry promises to make extremely painful for them. If or perhaps it should be when the black movement wins, a new sort of reality will emerge which in many ways will be as difficult as the present. There will be yet another rising capitalist state in Africa where the ruling class is dominantly black. The workers, whatever their skin colour, will have exchanged one set of exploiters for another.

Vultures

As if they had not suffered enough already, the survivors of the Manchester airport disaster were immediately subjected to the additional stress of the vulture-like attention of eminent persons such as Prince Charles (trying to prove that the royal family are a useful, caring influence in society); Margaret Thatcher (trying to win. or perhaps recover, some votes); and Manchester's Chief Constable James Anderton (of whom the less said the better).

These migrants were soon followed by another species, also seeking to prey on the victims' distress, as lawyers descended on Manchester and set up shop in the hope of handling claims against the airlines. From Philadelphia came Jim Pearce, countered by Manchester's own Rodger Pannone. Generous Malcolm Mason put an advertisement in a Sheffield newspaper inviting reverse-charge calls from anyone willing to let his New York firm handle their claims for damages. Naturally, the lawyers asserted that they were all acting in the victims' best interests; money, they reason, does not bring back the dead but it does an awful lot to soothe the grief of the bereaved. In the form of commission on a successful law suit, it also injects a healthy blush into a balance sheet.

But these were not the only vultures involved in this tragedy. Holiday charter aircraft are crammed with passengers; if this were not so, the operators say, the business would not be profitable — and the trade is savagely competitive. The extra seats mean narrower aisles in the aircraft, which means a more difficult, slower exit in an emergency.

British Airways (the World's Favourite Airline, say Saatchi and Saatchi) have taken the matter further than this. They have blocked some of the exits on some of their aircraft to make way for more seats. Then there is the matter of the materials used in the seating, which in most cases is little better than deadly in a fire. There is a flame-retardant covering available but this at present costs quite a bit more than the present stuff, which brings the airlines up against the demands of profit again.

Finally, the aircraft themselves are worked to their limits, to schedules designed to extract the maximum of profit from them. Servicing intervals must be crammed into these demands. Even after the disaster at Manchester, a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration announced that checks on the suspect engines would have to . . coincide with airline maintenance and flying schedules".

It might be some consolation to the people who died in the fire, and to their families and friends, to know that they died to keep a schedule, to protect the profits of the airlines and the holiday operators. The drive for profit allows no peace for human beings, alive or dead.

On the rampage

It is by now an established routine that after each inner-city riot, such as that last month in Handsworth, the experts run amok brandishing their theories, explanations and remedies.

Some Labour politicians attribute the riots to the effects of unemployment and therefore, by implication, to Thatcher's policies. The left wing put the blame onto heavy-handed police techniques and argue that the remedy is a democratically accountable police force, ignoring the fact that the police are already accountable to the class whose interests they exist to protect — the capitalists.

Blacks are certain that it is all caused by racial discrimination and offer the policy of "smashing" racism, which usually means substituting one type of repression for another, with little to choose between them. The police — and most Tories — insist that the riots are matters of simple criminality, of the perverse drive of a minority to disrupt what is called civilised life. Their remedy, pronounced with varying degrees of ghoulish thrill, is harsher punishment and more of it.

All of these are agreed on one thing. There must be An Enquiry To Get To The Bottom Of It. When the Enquiry has reported and all the experts have read the report we shall be able to re-organise things so that it never happens again.

It is all as if history never happened, as if Handsworth has not already suffered a riot, as if St. Pauls, Brixton, Toxteth are places where peace has reigned undisturbed. Is it really necessary to go through all this agony, just to get a visit from a cabinet minister and the promise of a few new buildings, a few square yards of grassland, a few trees planted?

The flaw which is shared by all the arguments of the "experts" is that they are based on a superficial view of society and its problems. All of them presume that a social system based on the class ownership of the means of life is logical, efficient and pretty well eternal. This might be all very well except that this system must throw up social ailments which will come to some very nasty crises.

Capitalism separates the majority of people from access to the means of life except as employees, workers for a wage. It denies them access to wealth except as buyers; however much we need it we can't get hold of anything without in some way paying for it.

One result of this is that the majority of people are in a state of alienation — from their employment, from their environment, from their human prospects. This alienation is at its most acute where poverty is deepest, in the grimmer places of working-class life such as inner city areas whose grime, slums and apathy are material expressions of frustration.

Capitalism cannot be a society of harmony.

Blogger's Note:

The November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article by Ron Cook on the recent riots in Handsworth and, also, his memories of growing up in Handsworth in the 1930s.

Labour's bloody war record (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

War is mass murder, made glorious by legality and respectable by morality. Our century has seen more deaths from war than any other; it has witnessed the sophistication of the instruments of mass destruction to a point where total human annihilation is not a deranged fear, but a prospect ever more probable. Surrounded by the wounded of past battles and the cries of the present victims of military competition, workers in 1985 look towards the future in the knowledge that the next big war could be the last one. Clichéd an observation as it has become, we are on the brink of destruction.

The urgent task before us is to avoid another war not just a nuclear war or a world war. but any war. The only way to make war impossible is to destroy its cause: the system of society in which production is for sale on the market with a view to profit and in which the endless competition between companies and nations over markets, trade routes and raw materials inevitably breaks out into violent conflict. It is the worldwide profit system which makes war necessary and that hideous necessity will never be eradicated while capitalism is left intact. That is why the only genuine anti-war party is the Socialist Party; and why all parties which stand for capitalism are pro-war parties.

Does Labour stand for war?

Certainly, the Labour Party did not set out to become a pro-war party. When it was formed in 1906 its founders, like many Labourites today, thought the Labour Party possessed the moral strength and reforming zeal required to make wars impossible under Labour governments. It was to be the party of peace and many doubtlessly sincere workers gave it their support, having witnessed the miserable slaughter which British militarism had inflicted on the working class in the nineteenth century. Here was to be a party which, when elected to form a government, would refuse to support the old imperial policies. The Tories and the Liberals had led the workers to the trenches for the sake of enriching the capitalists; Labour was for peace. "The Army and Navy do not exist to defend working people" stated Labour MP. Philip Snowden, in the House of Commons in June 1913. Ten years later the ILP’s Socialist Programme was adopted, stating that as soon as there was a Labour government it would "take the initiative in making positive proposals for immediate universal disarmament" According to Snowden, this would be achieved by a Labour government negotiating "a general reduction of armaments. leading to universal disarmament". (If Labour Rules, 1923.)

Within a year of those promises the Labour Party was elected to office as a minority government. At last it had the chance to show workers what it meant by peace policies.

Labour and the Great War

Before turning to the war record of the first Labour government. let us recall the role of the Labour Party in 1914 when British workers were called to sacrifice themselves in a war which even most modern historians recognise to have been over nothing but capitalist economic interests. As a party which was "for peace" did Labour urge workers not to fight? On the contrary, no sooner had the war been declared than the Labour Party placed itself "at the disposal of the Government in their recruiting campaign' (Labour Leader, 3 September 1914.) Later in the war. in an interview with the Manchester Guardian, W.F. Purdy declared that

As Chairman of the EC of the Labour Party I am not going to meet or sit in conference with the representatives of the enemy countries while we are at war. I mean to carry out the policy of British Labour as laid down by our representative gathering. That policy is to pursue the war to a successful termination, which means to a complete victory over the enemy. (7 June 1917.)

That was the policy of the so-called peace party when its credentials were put to the test: it wanted the war to be won by the capitalists of Britain at the cost of the lives of the fighting workers. And Labour's leaders lost no time in recruiting workers to the cause of killing other members of their class. Arthur Henderson, the Labour member of the war-time government, contributed an article to The Times Recruiting Supplement in which he wrote:

A clarion call has been sounded, the nation's imperative and essential need has been proclaimed. and under the leadership of the Sovereign the young manhood of our country is generously responding and volunteering for national service ... (3 November 1915.)

Keir Hardie not only addressed meetings to recruit workers to the killing organisation, but urged workers at home to work with a greater sense of dedication to the country:

A nation at war must be united . . With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot the lads who have gone forth to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home (Merthyr Pioneer, 14 August 1914.)

George Lansbury, who made a great noise about being a pacifist before the war began, refused to print any anti war letters or resolutions in the Daily Herald. And Ramsay MacDonald who was described in a recent public debate by Richard Balfe MEP as the leading Labourite to oppose the First World War. wrote a letter to the Mayor of Leicester stating that

Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. 1 want the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood, and similar movements to face their duty To such men it is enough to say "England has need of you". (Daily Chronicle. 14 August 1914.)

Which is not quite the same as saying "Workers of all lands unite ". In 1914 the Labour Party acquired its first bloodstain. Those who recruit workers to kill and die are no less culpable for the consequences of such action than the most dedicated warmonger-. at least the red. white and blue Tory nationalists did not pretend to be advocates of peace and socialism.

The first Labour government

Before forming a government, the Labour Party adhered vaguely to the contention that war could only be abolished by ending the social system which is its cause. In The Labour Leader of 14 December 1916 Ramsay MacDonald wrote that an "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring has to be destroyed before we have satisfactory guarantee of peace". But MacDonald and his party did not understand the nature of the order which necessitates war (capitalism) and therefore ended up running it. MacDonald appointed Lord Thomson as Air Minister and. so successful was his work as organiser of British militarism, that his Tory successor, Sir Samuel Hoare, made a speech six days after the defeat of the Labour government in which he could state:

The citizens of London can rest assured that the air defence of these shores is substantially better than it was twelve months ago. (Speech at London Guildhall, 10 November 1924.)

It has been argued by apologists for the Labour Party that those first two governments were not real Labour governments because they only had a minority in the Commons. Having a minority of MPs is no excuse whatsoever for doing the dirty work of running capitalism's war machine. Supposing for one moment that the minority of Labour MPs had been socialists, it would have been quite possible for them to refuse to vote in favour of any military expenditure to disrupt in every way possible any parliamentary efforts to strengthen or preserve the war machine. This is what a minority of socialist MPs would no doubt do if they found themselves elected to parliament before a majority of workers have opted for socialism. But the Labour Party’s opportunism led them to abandon their verbal commitment to peace and to administer that "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring".

World War Two and after

In 1939 Britain went to war, not for democracy or to save the Jews from persecution by the Nazis (if the former was the reason it was odd that Britain’s ally was Stalinist Russia. and if the latter it is strange that the British government had been so willing to tolerate Nazism for six years), but to protect British markets, trade routes and raw materials against expansion by the Fascist powers. Speaking in the House of Commons on 9 June 1939, Labour MP Manny Shinwell stated the real reason for the war cry:

Clearly the Government must make up their minds what is their objective in relation to foreign trade. Is it to capture our lost markets, no matter where they are . . . or are we to allow Germany . . to prevent this country from re-establishing herself in foreign markets?

It was an economic war over who got what that is to say, which set of national capitalists. For workers the war was unworthy of support. But, like in 1914, the Labour leaders were ever ready to act as recruiting sergeants for British capitalism.

After the war had wasted the lives of millions of workers who owned and controlled no markets, contrary to Shinwell's possessive adjectives, a Labour government was elected with Clement Attlee as Prime Minister. In the Daily Herald on 19 May 1945 Attlee was reported as stating that "We can prevent war; we can abolish poverty". The claim that the Labour government could abolish poverty has been shown to be ridiculous. But what of its promise to prevent war?

In 1945 Attlee sent a Labour observer to the atomic bombing of Japan There is no evidence of any government effort to prevent this barbaric act. Attlee commented:

. . . the use of the atom bomb at Hiroshima brought the war to a sudden end. It was, of course, an immense relief. (As It Happened, p.150.)

Over 100,000 workers dead and the Labour Prime Minister felt "immense relief". Then Attlee’s government commenced work on producing a British atomic bomb. The British atomic/nuclear programme was not initiated by the wicked Tories, but by the "peace-loving" Labourites. How flattered the Labour MPs must have been when, on 24 October 1952, after the Tories had defeated Labour in a general election. Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons:

All those concerned in the production of the first British atomic bomb are to be warmly congratulated on the successful outcome of an historic episode and I should no doubt pay my compliments to the Leader of the Opposition and the party opposite for initiating it. 

Every member of the Labour Party in 1985 should consider that compliment seriously.

The Labour government helped to set up the NATO alliance, which has since become one of the two major war organisations in the modern world (the other being the Warsaw Pact). In recent years, despite Labour Party pretensions to becoming a more peace-loving party, every time British participation in the NATO murder machine has been questioned at Labour Party conferences there has been an overwhelming majority in favour of retaining British membership.

In order to support its militarist policies the Attlee government increased armaments expenditure from £692 million in 1948 to over £1 billion in 1951. In 1938, in the heat of war preparations, there were 380,000 members of the armed forces; by 1951 there were over 700,000. If, as we have quoted Snowden as saying, "the army and navy do not exist to defend working people", it does not require much intelligence to see that Labour's increase in the cost and size of Britain's army and navy was in order to benefit the non-working class — the capitalists.

Far from preventing war, the Attlee government positively supported it. They gave military support to the Dutch capitalists in their war to retain possession of Indonesia. In the House of Commons on 18 February 1947, the Labour Minister of War, Fred Bellenger, stated:

Arms of the appropriate nature were provided for Dutch units in Indonesia on a normal basis for a force numbering 62,000. We are in the process of providing similar arms for a further 19,000 Dutch troops.

Similarly, the Attlee government played its full part in the Korean bloodbath, with Labour Minister Herbert Morrison, stating that entering the war "was the only way to preserve peace" (The Times, 3 July 1950). The same government was the first in Britain to impose peace-time conscription.

Unlike in 1924 and 1929. the 1945-51 Labour government could not fall back on the excuse that it was a minority government. They had a big majority and quite intentionally carried out their appalling war policies. By 1951 any worker in any doubt about Labour’s pro-war stance had nothing to blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals. To blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals.

Labour as an efficient party of war

We need not waste much space on the Wilson-Callaghan Labour governments (1964-70 and 1974-79). Even Labour's most naive idealists make few claims for the "socialist" nature of these governments. If in the 1920s Labour's war policies could be blamed on the government's minority status, and in the 1940s they could claim to be inexperienced, by the age of Harold Wilson the Labour Party had become no more or less than a party out to serve capitalism, but to serve it better than the Tories. By the 1960s Labourites were not shocked when their party initiated horrific war policies this is what they expected and anyone who refused to endorse war could have nothing to do with supporting the government. Many Labourites got into the habit of disowning Labour's war policy — they were for Labour, but "we don't support the nasty bits; we are working for a left-wing leadership which will make labour against war".

This is a wholly untenable position. Firstly, one cannot support actively the election of a government and then disown it when it gets its hands dirty with working-class blood. To do so is like collecting funds for the IRA and then disassociating oneself from the bombing of pubs full of workers. Those who feed the beast are culpable for those it slays. Secondly, there is no way that a so-called left-wing leadership of the Labour Party will be any different from previous ones. A party which is going to run the system, which means dancing to the tune of the British capitalists, cannot ignore the defence of their master s capital. That is why Michael Foot, veteran CNDer, became leader of the Labour Party, feeding thousands of Labour leftists with the hope that he would lead his party away from war and then proceeded to play down his party's semi-anti-nuclear policy and make endless statements during the 1983 general election about how a Labour government would be fully committed to NATO and all the old war policies. Again, that master of opportunist compromise. Neil Kinnock, has made it plain that all of his leftist posturing in the past will count for nothing if ever he is given the chance to serve the capitalist class as their Prime Minister.

The Wilson governments supported the American capitalists in their war in Vietnam. After the Pinkville Massacre George Brown, then Labour s deputy leader, declared that "the Americans should stop weeping and get on with the Vietnam war". (Evening Standard, 21 November 1969.) It was Callaghan. as a minister under Wilson, who intensified the war in Ireland by sending British troops there, thus giving sectarians the perfect reason to take up arms and recruit members to. the cause of violence. And it was the last Labour government which developed the British nuclear submarine programme — doing so without even taking the matter to parliament. Today Labour can be seen as an efficient party of war. Should it come to power again few generals will be contemplating the need for a military coup: the honoured killers of the British armed forces now know that Labour is a party with which they can work quite well. Indeed, it is an irony that the policy of the Labour Left is to expand the conventional armed forces — of the kind used during the Falkland war, which almost every Labour MP supported — and to attack the Tories for running down Britain’s military arsenal. For example, the Labour Party is pledged to expand the British navy; when the Chatham naval dockyards were closed down Labour MPs were attacking the Thatcher government for being traitors. This supports a comment made by an American political journalist in the New York Times in April 1963:

Labour's main point of difference with the Conservative government is a feeling that Britain is not making sufficient contribution to NATO in conventional terms.

Is it not at least possible that some of the millionaires who are making their profits out of armaments manufacture are hoping for another Labour government?

The hard fact which must be laced by Labourites is that they will never eradicate war and the grotesque preparations for it without making war unnecessary. While there is capitalism war is necessary and bombs will not be banned in response to the chants of the pious. The question which should be on the minds of all Labour Party supporters is: Is it worth supporting a party which has repeatedly participated in the killing business in the hope that its rhetoric will drown out experience, or is it urgent to throw aside the dogmas of Labourism for the sake of doing some serious, conscious organising to get rid of the system which will destroy us if we do not destroy it first?

Steve Coleman

Apartheid the background (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article first appeared as a chapter in our pamphlet The Problem of Racism: A Socialist Analysis that we published in 1966. We republish it today not only because it outlines the historical background to the situation in South Africa but also because recent events there bear out our analysis that apartheid, far from being in the interests of the South African capitalist class, was an attempt to go against the logic of the capitalist system and so doomed to collapse sooner or later.

A number of changes — all in the same direction — have occurred since the article was written: the virtual disappearance of the industrial colour bar, the legalisation and recognition of African trade unions, the emergence of the Progressive Federal Party as the main white opposition party in place of the United Party, the admission of Coloureds and Indians to some, albeit a paltry, say in national political matters, the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. All these changes represent victories for the logic of capitalism — "the market is colour blind", or better "exploitation is colour blind" — over the system of apartheid. And now sections of the South African capitalist class are calling for negotiations with African nationalists to bring about political reform.

The present population of the Republic of South Africa are descendants of people who came from many parts of Africa. Europe and Asia. The latest census figures, those of 1960. show that out of a population of 16 million some 11 million (68 per cent) are Bantu or Africans. 3 million (19 per cent) Whites. 1 l/z million (10 per cent) Coloureds and nearly half a million (3 per cent) Asians, mainly Indians. The principal race problem arises over the relations between Whites and non-Whites, especially the Africans, though this is not the only race problem as the African anti-Indian riots in Durban in 1949 show.

White people first came to South Africa in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a post at the Cape. Settlers, mainly Dutch, came not long after. Within a few years slavery was also introduced. The original Hottentot people were not actually enslaved but were reduced to a servile status by various laws which forced them to work for the Whites. The slaves in South Africa came from many places: West and East Africa. Madagascar. India. Ceylon, Malaya. In the early days there was much intermarrying between Whites and Hottentots and slaves and eventually emerged the group now known as the Cape Coloureds. In the 150 years after the original settlement a pattern emerged: the whites were the masters and people of colour the servants. This colour division marked off groups that were almost castes, and the habit of thought became deeply rooted and still survives. In this period there was a self- sufficient pastoral economy with sheep and cattle farming, which required wide ranges of land and led to expansion inland. But as the White farmers or Boers moved inland they met Bantu tribes coming in from the north for much the same reasons. There were clashes, the first major one being that of 1779.

A further complication was introduced in 1806 when the British government finally acquired control of the area from the Dutch. The new governors tried to introduce an efficient governmental machine by streamlining taxation, the law courts, land registration. etc. They also interfered with the traditional master-servant relationship. In 1828 the Coloureds were given the same legal status as Whites and, in 1834, the slaves were freed. In 1820 the first immigrants from Britain arrived. As a result of these measures many Boers, together with their servants, moved inland in the Great Trek and away from British rule setting up the two Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As the Boers advanced they came increasingly into conflict with the Bantu tribes, and generally, but not always, the Boers triumphed. In doing so they did not drive the Bantu back before them; these Africans were reduced to being landless squatters and labourers on European held land. Denied access to the land the Africans became entirely dependent on their Boer masters. In 1877 the British government intervened, annexing the Transvaal and setting up Native Reserves. After a revolt four years later the Boers achieved independence under British sovereignty. The Orange Free State was now also independent, the territory having been first annexed by the British in 1848 and abandoned six years later.

The Indians were introduced into South Africa in the 1860s as indentured labourers on the sugar plantations of Natal. When their contracts expired many stayed on while others came of their own accord.

In 1867 occurred the discovery of diamonds which was to transform the South African economy. It was not long before diamond mining fell into the hands of big capitalists like Cecil Rhodes. The independent diggers were reduced to wage-workers; skilled workers were introduced from Europe and America, while the unskilled work was done by Africans. When gold was discovered in the Transvaal 17 years later the same pattern emerged: whites got the skilled high-wage jobs and blacks the unskilled low-wage jobs. This was not purely a matter of discrimination as the whites were the more skilled but eventually the pattern became fixed. The caste division of the farm was introduced into industry.

The coming of capitalism to South Africa had a serious effect on the self-sufficient pastoral communities of the Boers. In the Transvaal under President Kruger they did all they could to prevent capitalism breaking up their way of life. In the end it came to war in 1899. This war, which lasted for three years, was a classic imperialist war with gold as the prize for British imperialism. Although the Boer Republics were incorporated on equal terms into the Union of South Africa in 1909, anti-British, anti-imperialist Afrikaner Nationalism survived.

The advent of capitalism not only had its effect on the Africans, turning many into urban wage-workers, but had a similar effect on the Boers. Many became landless themselves, reduced like the Africans to being squatters on European-held land. After the first world war many drifted to the towns creating a poor white’ problem. Unlike the workers who had been imported into the diamond and gold mines these Whites were unskilled and unused to industrial discipline; left to compete with Africans on equal terms they would have been reduced to the level of destitution of the Africans. The government adopted various measures to deal with this problem. One of these measures was the extension of the industrial Colour Bar. Some skilled and semi-skilled jobs were legally barred to Africans. Jobs were reserved for Whites in the State-run railways and public services.

Striking by Africans had been a criminal offence since 1911. The pass laws, the beginnings of residential segregation and other restrictions date from this period. In 1936 the African voters on the Cape Province electoral roll were removed to a separate roll. The various inter-war governments were, in effect, trying to protect white society’ from the effects of capitalism. In other words, the pre-industrial farm ideology of the Whites as masters and Blacks as servants was surviving and reacting on capitalism. At the time most of the capitalist class were prepared to go along with this policy as segregation and the colour bar were not pursued in a systematic fashion but were a series of patchwork measures not ruling out change in the future. Some did protest. They protested at State interference in the market. They pointed out how wasteful and unprofitable it was to deny Africans access to skilled jobs. They protested at having to pay wages on a colour basis rather than on the quality of the labour-power.

The capitalists and their economists took the same orthodox liberal line as does W.H. Hutt in his "The Economics of the Colour Bar’’, published in 1964. In a chapter entitled "The Market is Colour-Blind”. Hutt puts the capitalist case against colour and other forms of prejudice quite plainly.- "When we buy a product in the free market, we do not ask: What was the colour of the person who made it? Nor do we ask about the sex, race, nationality, religion or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money" (page 173).

The present Afrikaner Nationalist government was first elected in May 1948 with a race policy of preserving the domination of the white people come what may. The somewhat haphazard segregationist policies of previous governments was succeeded by a policy of ruthless apartheid, social and political. While previous governments had preferred mainly to rely on custom to separate the races’, the Nationalists believed in using the law and the full power of the State machine. In implementing their policies the Nationalist government, amid protests from the conservative opposition United Party, has shown scant regard for the traditional parliamentary procedure or for academic freedom or for established civil liberties. The so-called Communist Party was banned in 1950.

The names of the Acts passed since 1948 show the pattern of apartheid: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Population Registration Act, Group Areas Act. In 1956 the Coloureds were removed from the Cape Province electoral roll as the Africans had been 20 years previously. Other acts provided for a separate, inferior education for Africans, encouraged tribalism and restored the powers of the chiefs in the reserves. The Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 provided for the establishment of so-called Bantustans. The first of these has been in the Transkei where elections took place in 1963.

The Nationalists have enforced their policy with a logic that is sometimes cruel and sometimes ridiculous, as in the reported case of the bleaching of two Chinese women before moving them to a White hospital ward — or perhaps not so ridiculous as when Japanese are classified as White so as not to embarrass visiting Japanese businessmen. Today the non-Whites live apart from the Whites; are provided with separate entrances, park benches, buses, railway compartments, schools, beaches, etc. The African is given an education which does not allow him to compete on equal terms with Whites in the labour market; he is forbidden to strike; his trade unions are not recognised; he has to carry a degrading pass and is always subject to the petty arrogance of the police. By and large the non-White, and especially the African, is inferior socially, economically and politically. This policy has not been enforced without resistance.

In 1952 a large-scale civil disobedience campaign ended in violent rioting — in 1956 began the notorious Treason Trials. In 1960 at an anti-pass laws demonstration at Sharpeville police opened fire on an unarmed crowd killing and wounding many. The provisions of the Suppression of Communism Acts have been freely applied against all advocates of racial equality. Other Acts, such as the Sabotage Act. have made great inroads into traditional civil liberties.

In South Africa a government deriving its inspiration and programme from the racial attitudes of a pre-industrial society is trying to force a policy of racial separation on an economy which is becoming increasingly dependent on non-European labour. Today it is no longer only a primary producer of diamonds and gold; it has also developed other secondary industries. In both mining and other industries the bulk of the workers are non-White, and these make up the majority of the population of most of the large cities. A permanent non-White urban factory proletariat has been created.

The tendency of capitalism everywhere is to reduce all previous social divisions to the one great division between owners and non-owners of the means of production and distribution. In South Africa it is working against the traditional white/non-white caste division. The Nationalist government is trying to prevent this effect of capitalism working itself out. The capitalist class itself appears to be perturbed at the restrictions that apartheid places on its profit-making activities; it wants to pay wages according to skills not skin colour; it wants to train Africans as skilled workers to meet the acute and ever-growing shortage of skilled labour in South Africa (indeed there is evidence that non-whites are already illegally doing jobs reserved for whites).

This appears to be happening also on the State-run railways and in the public services. The Times (23 November 1964), under the headlines 'Manpower shortage causes breach in apartheid: job reservation by colour unworkable', reported that as a result of shortages "and apparently with the tacit approval of the Cabinet — non-White labour is beginning to infiltrate into these public services. The railway colour bar has already been breached in Durban where non-Whites (mainly Indian) are being employed in semi-skilled work. They are to do rivet-heating and coach-washing, jobs formerly reserved for white staff'. Others "are already employed on shunting operations without either official approval or protest".

In 1959 a number of leading capitalists broke with the opposition United Party because of its ineffectual opposition to apartheid and formed their own Progressive Party with the slogan merit not colour'. Unfortunately for them the White, mainly Afrikaans, working class is solidly behind the Nationalists. Should the Progressives or the more radical Liberals triumph then the main effect would be to simplify the class situation in South Africa. Pre-industrial caste attitudes would be pushed aside and the working class (of all colours and races) would stand opposed to the capitalist class (of all colours and races). In this respect a class of wealthy Indians has long been in existence; wealthy Africans are also beginning to appear. Thus the ground would be cleared for the final struggle between these two classes.

The present policy is a bid to preserve the values and attitudes of the old agricultural order. Afrikaner Nationalism tried once before to hold back capitalism when gold was discovered in the Transvaal; they failed that time — and. soon or later — they will fail this time too. By trying to divide the Africans through tribalism, by building up vast internal security forces and by repressive legislation the Nationalists may ward off the inevitable for a time. But sooner or later apartheid will go; the question is when and how. Although the Progressives and Liberals still hope for a peaceful solution, many of the African Nationalists have come to accept that violence is the only way. In any event capitalism must triumph in South Africa, peacefully or violently.

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned previously on the blog, sadly, the text of this pamphlet is not on the SPGB website. I'm not sure what happened. 

Are you underpaid? (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July there was a storm of controversy about relative rates of pay. The media, the unions, the politicians and the economists all entered the fray which arose out of the recommendation of a committee, set up for that purpose, to grant big increases of pay for top civil servants, judges and high ranking military officers. The pay of an Admiral and Civil Service Permanent Secretary went up from £45.000 to £60,000 and a High Court Judge's pay from £51,250 to £60,000. This got a bad press, partly on the ground that it was outrageous to give top people increases ranging up to 46 per cent while teachers, civil servants and others were being offered even less than the rise of prices, and partly on the ground (this from supporters of the government) that it had been badly timed. The government narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Commons. many Tory MPs abstaining.

The committee which recommended the increases gave as their reasons that, while the top people in the government service did not expect to get into the £100.000- £200.000 levels of some of the highest paid directors of companies, the gap had become too large; they were being disheartened and demoralised and the recruitment of suitable people was falling off — reasons which the critics found unconvincing. A telling point made by the government was that similar big increases had been given by the last Labour government.

Unions currently engaged in pay negotiations made the most of this situation. How could it be justified that already well paid top people should be given these big increases while teachers were being offered only 6 per cent? The teachers' unions argued that at their present pay, teachers are "grossly underpaid". But this does not single teachers out from all the other workers. Every one of the nearly 400 unions will maintain with equal vehemence that their members, too. are "grossly underpaid".

It would be entertaining if the opinion pollsters were to take time off from failing to forecast accurately the results of by-elections and conduct polls about what people think of their pay. To the first question. “Do you think you are underpaid?", the answers would surely be an overwhelming "Yes". The answers to a second question. "On what do you base this belief?" would be more interesting.

The list of reasons would be long and varied. That pay is not enough to live on. It does not take enough account of our skills and qualifications, or of our conditions of work, of our having to work at night or at the weekend. We have to work underground, or in the open-air, or at heights above ground. Our work is dangerous, or boring or exhausting; our pay undervalues the quality and quantity of our output, or our responsibility for human life, or for health or large sums of money. It has not kept up with prices and so on. Of course the pollsters should include the people receiving sick benefit, unemployment benefit or pensions. It is certain that large numbers of the replies would be concerned with comparisons — women's pay and men's, rural pay and pay in the towns, industrial workers' pay and that of office workers. Naturally everybody 's pay would be compared with that of the top people.

Ever since the government started publishing information on average pay in different industries, and average pay in all industries combined, the workers receiving less than the combined average have claimed that they ought to have their pay brought up to that average. (Agricultural workers recently asked for their pay to be doubled on that ground.) If ever such an adjustment was accepted for general application it would end up with all industries receiving the same pay. If no industry remained below the average there could be no industry above the average either.

The idea of the same pay for all has had well-known backers. Marx alleged of Proudhon that his idea of the aim of social revolution was "equality of wages". At one time Bernard Shaw advocated it, as did Lenin in Russia and Attlee, Prime Minister of the 1945-51 Labour government in Britain. Lenin, in his State and Revolution, published in 1917 before the Communists seized power, wrote: "The whole of society will become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay". A year later he announced that this idea was unworkable and had had to be abandoned. It has, of course, never been resumed. Attlee in his The Will and the Way to to Socialism (1935) rejected the Tory belief "that society must always be divided into classes of rich and poor", and promised that a Labour government would abolish social classes and introduce "an equalitarian society", the method being to raise wages and cut down the incomes of the rich. "There would be no little cottages and no large private houses. All would be reasonably housed."

No political party now treats seriously the concept of equal pay to all as a practical way to run capitalism, but much has been written about, and much effort applied to. schemes for fixing relativities between the wages paid in all occupations, by means of "job evaluation". The late Lord Brown, a Labour Party supporter (not Lord George Brown) claimed that it would be possible to fix the "proper" rate of pay for every job in the country from the lowest to the highest. The requirements of each job would be assessed and points awarded for each factor; for qualifications and skill, for initiative and responsibility and working conditions, and numerous other factors. According to Lord Brown's scheme, this would result in an objective and scientific measure for comparing one job with any other and fixing pay accordingly.

This, and other proposals for fixing comparative rates of pay on some ideal standard. come up against practical difficulties. Any trade union which found itself in a position to enforce higher pay than the one awarded would ignore the assessment, as would any employer who could get all the workers needed at a lower rate of pay.

But the theory behind such schemes is also flawed. The assessments can never be objective, depending as they do on who makes them. There would always be disagreement between the people actually doing the job and the outside assessors. Although the Royal Commission on the Civil Service 1953-55 recommended that some use might be made of job evaluation in the fixing of the pay of civil service grades, their Report (page 149) admitted that objectivity is impossible, as indeed it is:

In this and in other fields where it is necessary to compare and to add together factors, which are, strictly speaking, unmeasurable, the use of the points system may well facilitate consistency of judgement-, though it must be recognised that the judgement itself remains essentially subjective.

Behind the widespread complaint of workers that they are underpaid is the belief that, as distinct from the pay they are actually receiving, a "fair", or "just", or "equitable" rate for the job would be something more. (None of the replies to the pollsters would say that the subject is overpaid, though plenty would say that of other people's jobs.) This is quite meaningless and irrelevant, arising out of the refusal to face up to the fact that we live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is not concerned with distribution on some principle of "equity" but with making as much profit as possible. It is as true now as when Marx wrote in Value, Price and Profit over a century ago. that capitalism is a class-divided society, the two classes having opposing interests:

The capitalist class constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum; and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.

In this struggle trade union organisation and strikes are the workers' only weapons. For the employers, including government departments and nationalised industries, the "proper" rate of pay is the lowest that they can get the workers to accept and yet recruit in sufficient number the workers needed. This is the background against which the great mass of the wage and salary earners get their living. It is another matter entirely for the propertied class who depend for their living, not on working, but on profits, interest and land rent, based on the exploitation of the working class. What way out is there? Marx provided the answer. He did not urge the workers to carry on with the endless struggle for "fair wages" but the reverse:

Instead of the conservative motto, "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work”, they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchword "Abolition of the wages system".

Before leaving consideration of the people with fancy and quite unrealistic ideas about reforming the wages system under capitalism. Woodrow Wyatt (Times, 27 July 1985) provides an interesting sidelight on the MPs. Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, was very angry about the big increases for top people. So were many Tory, Labour, Liberal and SDP members. Wyatt had this to say:

However, despite their sudden conversion to "social justice" most were among those MPs who in July 1983 voted themselves to be linked by January 1988 to 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay. A very nice bonanza with no examination by an independent review body. MPs' pay is now £16.900 a year. Already 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay is £20,404 and by 1988 will be around £23.000 giving MPs an increase of some 36 per cent to look forward to.

The MPs' pay of £16,900 is supplemented by what Wyatt says are very generous allowances.

Perhaps the pollsters will ask MPs if they too think they are grossly underpaid and if so why. particularly in view of the fact that all of the several thousand who have been in Parliament since 1945 were committed to hold down prices and maintain "full employment". They can hardly base their claim on their performance in these two fields.

Edgar Hardcastle

Elected or dismissed? (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Someone once said: "Governments are not elected, they're dismissed'. At a time when opinion polls are showing the Tories bottom and Labour top. it's something worth thinking about. Why in 1985 should voters want to put back in power the party they removed in 1979? They've got short memories, it's often said, and this may be part of the story. But isn't it also true that the present polls are not so much a thumbs-up to Labour as a thumbs-down to the Tories? And isn’t this always part of the continual see-saw of parties in power?

The plain fact is that whatever government is in power there's always widespread dissatisfaction with the state of things. In the end this results in enough people switching their vote to bring a change of government. Do those who switch their vote believe that a different government will remove their dissatisfaction? This must be doubtful, because what most of us feel isn't just disappointment about a particular government failing to keep certain promises or deal with obvious problems. It's something deeper than that, something not easy to get to the root of. and so workers are tempted to blame sitting targets like the government in power, a racial minority, lack of discipline in schools, trade unions, or even "human nature". And it isn't surprising that we should make a sitting target of the government of the day because they're the body that makes the rules and regulations that run our lives.

The powers-that-be aren't alarmed about voters doing this either. On the contrary, the mechanism which allows people to act on their feelings of dissatisfaction by sacking the government in power and voting in another one is extremely useful, in the countries where it exists, for the safe continuation of the status quo. It's a safety valve which the "one-party state" varieties of capitalism (Russia. China. Angola. Syria, for example) don't have and the absence of which makes them a prey to explosive situations — as we've seen recently in places as far apart as Chile and Poland. Without an electoral channel for dissatisfaction, the lid is hard to hold down. It's far better, more stable and more efficient from the point of view of those in whose interest government over people exists (the small minority who own or control the means of producing wealth in all countries of the world) for there to be a choice between supposedly different political parties.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that as countries develop along the road of advanced industrial capitalism they are more and more likely to adopt parliamentary systems of government. Recently established parliaments in countries like Spain. Portugal and Greece illustrate this point, as do the abortive attempts at parliamentary government in Chile, Turkey and Uruguay and even the gropings towards more democratic political forms in Eastern bloc countries (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland). Present developments in Russia itself suggest a growing awareness there that without political "pluralism" and the freer expression of ideas that goes with it economic development is hampered and social dissatisfaction is harder to contain.

What then is the root cause of this dissatisfaction? To find it, we have to look not at the differences between what political parties here have to offer but at the similarities between them. The differences, when examined closely, don’t amount to much — half a per cent on or off income tax. a bit more or a bit less state ownership, marginally different amounts spent on health or education, preference for one kind of weapon of war rather than another, and so on. The similarities are far more important. They consist of:

• an acceptance that a small minority of the population will own the vast majority of the wealth and that the mass of the population will therefore own very little save their ability to work;
• a commitment to running a commercial system based on buying and selling where goods are produced not to satisfy people's needs but only when there's profit in it for the owning minority;
• the enactment of legislation to facilitate the making of profit for the minority;
• the use of a police force and judicial system to deter or punish people who don't conform to the dictates of legislation and the keeping in readiness of armed forces for use against foreign powers who might threaten the markets, trade routes and sources of raw materials essential to the maintenance of the owning minority's wealth.
• an acceptance of the system of "employment" whereby the majority of people (the workers or employed) have to seek work in exchange for money from the minority (the capitalists or employers) who own the land, factories, machines, offices, and so on or from the state (in education, health, transport) which exists to maintain minority ownership.

These are the factors — present whichever party or parties are in government which cause the perpetual dissatisfaction among the governed. We're dissatisfied. for example, because we own very little which we can truly call our own and therefore live in a state of material insecurity. Because the available goods and services are rationed by the money we have in our pockets, we're naturally prey to the mentality of scarcity, to wanting to grab as much as we can while we can get it. It's hard for us to shake off neurotic preoccupations about material possessions and assess our real needs.

More importantly, however, we're dissatisfied because we need to be employed. Employment means spending most of our waking hours performing tasks which we have chosen to do principally because we need the money — the wage or salary — they bring in. It's true that some forms of employment are less unpleasant than others and some are even pretty tolerable, but rarely is our job the work we'd do if we had a completely free choice of activity; and at any rate rarely would we go about it in the same way. In addition, everyone likes variety and the chance to do different kinds of work at different times in our lives — even perhaps on different days of the week or month. But this is hardly ever possible under the system of employment. Instead we have to count ourselves lucky to have a job at all. We have to stick to it and forget about whether we enjoy it or have talents which could usefully be employed elsewhere. Add to this the fact that employment puts us in a social and geographical straitjacket (who wouldn't like to mix with new or different people, travel more, move to another place now and then?) and we have a recipe for dissatisfaction which not even the most drastic government legislation could fundamentally alter.

The recipe doesn't need altering of course, but replacing by a quite different one. Which one? Well, if a fundamental problem is the employment system, a solution might seem to be unemployment. But as the present four million unemployed will testify, it isn't. And this is one of the paradoxes of the system we live under. We're driven by economic necessity to spend most of our lives seeking or being involved in activity which most of us find unpleasant, and even on occasions to demand the "right" to engage in it. The only unemployed people who don't have to face this topsy-turvy situation are those who own enough wealth not to have to look for a job — the Dukes of Devonshire, the Lord Sieffs and the Tiny Rowlands of this world. Not that such people are necessarily happy in their particular brand of unemployment and in fact many of them choose to engage in work of some kind. But it's work chosen freely and not out of financial motivation. And, in a society rationally organised in the interests of all its members, it 's precisely this kind of work which will be available to everyone — freely chosen and self-determined. Employment — wage slavery — will cease to be the be-all-and-end-all of our lives.

We're talking about a society without money, wages or financial incentives of any kind. The only "incentives" to work will be our biological need to expend energy, our desire to realise our talents and the common interest we all have in co-operating with our fellow human beings.

The rub, of course, is how to establish this kind of society. But the means are with us — the vote — providing we use it not as we've done before to dismiss governments who are "to blame" or to elect new ones we hope may dissatisfy us less, but to bring ourselves — wage and salary earners — to power as a majority for the purpose of running the world and using its wealth and resources in our own common interest. At present we use the vote to choose who will make the decisions about our own lives — we allow democracy to go only as far as the ballot box. The truly democratic use of the vote will be to bring in a society of common ownership and voluntary work in which we will all participate in the process of democratic decision-making about every aspect of our lives.

Howard Moss

Between the Lines: East Enders (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard 

East Enders

 

There are three views which can be arrived at about EastEnders (BBC1, Tuesday and Thursday. 7.30pm). One is that it is an insultingly nasty caricature of London workers. Indeed, at times the producers of this series seem to be stuck in the rut of the My Fair Lady image of working class existence: decent folk with ruddy cheeks who say "Gawd blimey", need looking after and aren't too bright. The producers' assumptions that East End workers spend their lives fluctuating between the small talk of the semi-conscious and the violent dramas of deranged maniacs may contain a grain of truth, but the ultimate picture derives from superficial caricature rather than serious social characterisation. For example, the long scene in which Angie attempts to seduce Lofty (5 September) owes more to the remote observer's image of how the uncouth and immoral proletarians carry on than to likely reality.

The overwhelming image given out by the programme is of life as experienced by people who are too dull-witted to cope; thank goodness for Dr Legg who is always there to keep the hapless wage slaves on the straight and narrow — not to mention the escapee from Dock Green. Detective Quick. (Who thinks up these names?)

Secondly, one can see the series as a realistic portrayal of members of the working class whose lives are full from day to day with endless problems. We are shown it as a reflection of our own lives. Arthur's long search for a job. the repeatedly failed efforts of the three young lads to succeed as entrepreneurs in the knitting business. Den's need to trade in stolen goods in order to supplement his income from the pub, the lack of facilities for the young unmarried mother, the fear of the old women who dare not walk in the streets.

All of these problems flash before us and we are expected to accept complacently that "this is reality" as we watch the victims of the system crawl out of one contradiction and into the next. It is possible to imagine a person living in a future socialist society, watching video recordings of EastEnders and asking how such miserable lives could be offered as entertainment. After all. at least in Shakespeare's tragedies the audience was not expected to share the same fate as the fictitious victims; but the point of "reality" drama like EastEnders is that the viewer is supposed to relate through experience to the wretchedness on the screen.

There is a third point to be made about EastEnders: that it is nothing more than an attempt by the BBC to beat their ITV rivals in the soap-opera audience ratings war. TV programmes are like other commodities and TV companies are out to win viewers; EastEnders was devised by a gang of BBC whiz-kids whose prime aim was not to entertain or to convey a message, but to push up the ratings. If this could be achieved by screening performing jugglers, then that is what we would be shown.

Capitalism — the system which prides itself on providing for individual needs — is not interested in programme schedules which satisfy such needs, or high dramatic standards, but in putting on whatever will draw a mass audience.

The BBC is succeeding in this aim: EastEnders has now more than once beaten Coronation Street to the top of the ratings league. It will be interesting to see whether C4's Brookside, which was devised originally by its producer, Phil Redmond, as the soap with a social conscience, will be able to maintain its tendency to be more honest in its depiction of social reality than the mainstream soaps. The series certainly succeeded in this in its early days (especially those episodes written by the very able Jimmy McGovern) but, as C4 finds itself increasingly under IBA pressure to win in the ratings' war, it is significant that there has been a recent tendency to abandon realism for populist sensationalism, for example the July siege of the nurses' house and the sentimentalised saga of Edna's protracted death. One more piece of evidence. perhaps, that there can be no escape from the market even in the comfortable fantasy-land of the soaps.

Whose vision on our telly ?

Sounds of scandal and indignation from Broadcasting House as news of the activities of Room 101 is leaked. The NUJ protests. This is the thin end of the wedge, proclaims Vincent Hanna, who usually makes a living out of calling people extremists for getting hot under the collar like that.

Can it be true that M15 is vetting the job applications of BBC journalists? Can it be true that any BBC journalist with a modicum of political intelligence could have imagined up to now that MI5 was not vetting them? Of course the state will do its best to ensure that the right workers are appointed to the important jobs of telling its lies and distorting social reality. It is the function of the state machine, as the instrument of class rule, to see that the social order is upheld without interference from subversives.

Socialists do not call on the government to cease such secretive and undemocratic practices at once — to do so would be to express a degree of naivete which we do not possess. As long as the bosses are allowed to own and control the means of wealth production and distribution, which includes the means of mass communication. they will exercise their control to the advantage of minority class power and to the detriment of democracy. The task is not to democratise the BBC. as the NUJ might wish, but to revolutionise society: nothing less will do.

In a speech by George Howard, then chairman of the BBC. at Hull College of Further Education on 26 April 1982. the following quotation from the BBC's Charter and licence Agreement was quoted: "The Secretary of State may from time to time by notice in writing require the Corporation to refrain at any specified time or at all times from sending any matter or matters of any class specified in any such notice; and the Secretary of State may at any time or times vary or revoke such notice. The Corporation may at its discretion announce or refrain from announcing that such a notice has been given or has been varied or revoked". In other words, a government minister may force the BBC to refrain from putting out certain messages and the BBC authorities, appointed by the government, are free not to tell viewers that this has been done.

George Howard made the point, in his published speech, that such a provision in the Charter "would make a nonsense of our independence if. in fact, he (the minister) ever attempted" to use it. But how are we to know that it has not been used, for according to the wording of the provision it can be implemented and revoked without the BBC ever being under an obligation to tell the viewers. Now. there's something for the NUJ to think about.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note: 

According to this short piece about state vetting of BBC personnel during this period, it was Room 105 rather than Room 101.

50 Years Ago: The Capitalist League of Nations (1985)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

First let us examine the League of Nations. Its name obscures the truth. It is not a League of Nations, but a League of Governments, that is to say, it is directed and controlled by the representatives of the different sections of the capitalist class. If the importance of that is not at once apparent it is only necessary to point out that each of those Governments is occupied at home with the relentless suppression of the working class, by armed force if necessary. Never do those Governments set the armed forces in motion to promote or defend the interests of the working class, but always to protect capitalism and capitalist property rights. Yet we are asked to believe that these gentlemen undergo a surprising change on their journey to Geneva, and become representatives of the interest of humanity as a whole, or even of the working class in particular. Do our Labour Party opponents not recall that the same ridiculous spectacle was once a commonplace in the electoral field, of trade unionists voting into Parliament the very employers with whom they were engaged in bitter wages struggles?

[From an editorial "Let the Capitalists Fight Their Own Wars", published in the Socialist Standard, October 1935.]

Advert for the latest issue of the World Socialist Journal (1985)

Advert from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

To read the articles listed above, click on the following links:

• Editorial: Society and nature
• Class-divided society breeds pollution by George Jenkins (Canada)
• The threat to the Great Lakes by Ray Rawlings (Canada)
• Central America: which way to capitalism?  by Ron Elbert (United States)
• Capitalism, socialism and ecology by Robin Cox (Britain)
• The tyranny of the wages system by Richard Montague (Ireland)
• Sex in a free society by Ernst Fleischman (Denmark)
• D. H. Lawrence and the abolition of money
• Classic Reprint: Money Must Go by "Philoren" (Britain)
• Hiroshima, August 1945 by Walter Atkinson (Britain)

SPGB Meetings: 1985-86 Winter Lectures (1985)

Party News from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1985)

Party News from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

At the advertised Islington Branch Weekend School, one of the SPGB speakers was Brian Rubin, who spoke on the subject of The Far Right in Britain. The October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article entitled 'Ultra Right' by Brian. There's a strong chance there was an overlap between the article and his talk.

Life and Times: Money is a Bummer (2026)

The Life and Times column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a conversation I had with my friend Chris, he told me he was in a ‘moral quandary.’ He had been providing free temporary accommodation in his house to George, a former refugee, who he had previously helped to apply for ‘leave to remain’ in the UK and then to find regular employment. All had been going well between them until George went away for a few days and Chris received an email from him asking whether he could see his way to making him a loan of several thousand pounds. The purpose was to enable his wife and child, who were living in his former country, to come and visit him for a short period in accommodation he would find.

Chris asked me what I thought of this. I found it hard to say much, especially as I didn’t know the person in question, so I asked him what were his own feelings. He told me that, much as he wanted to help George and not disappoint him, he felt that this was an ask too far. George might think he (Chris) was well supplied with cash, but the reality was that the kind of loan George was asking for would make a significant impact on his savings and leave him feeling insecure about future unforeseen expenses or emergencies that might arise. George was also making a ‘solemn promise’ to pay the money back on a monthly basis over a period of a year. But though Chris didn’t doubt the sincerity of George’s intentions, he wasn’t convinced he’d be able to manage that.

In fact, the more he’d thought about it, he told me (and he’d thought a lot about it to the extent of losing sleep), the more his outlook veered back and forth. On the one hand he knew about how much George had suffered in his country of origin (a dictatorship), how resilient he’d been and how desperately he wanted to see his wife and child. And so one part of him wanted to say yes, just give him the money and the devil take the hindmost. But, at the other extreme he wondered whether, though he thought he knew George pretty well, he could exclude the possibility of some kind of scam. This had also been the reaction of a couple of other friends he’d talked to about it. Obviously Chris hoped not, but as he put it to me, ‘money is such a bummer’. I said: ‘Yes, true, 100 per cent.’ What he told me he was dreading above all was a face-to-face conversation with George telling him he couldn’t help.

I took Chris’s quandary away with me, almost made it my own and then emailed George suggesting the following. Firstly, since George had made his request by email, he should email him back first of all rather than talk to him in person. Secondly, he should tell George that, whatever he might think, he (Chris) didn’t have much at all in the way of savings and couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t need to call on his funds in short order. Thirdly, he should say he didn’t feel comfortable about George being in the position of having to make a regular reimbursement which he might come to find difficult or impossible. Chris emailed me back to say he’d take that on board and would let me know what happened.

So what did happen? What did Chris do? Well, he sent to George the kind of response I’d suggested but was then in trepidation knowing that, when George got back, there’d still have to be some kind of face-to-face conversation. But when that happened, it was actually George who started it and said he fully understood Chris’s position, that he was sorry and realised he shouldn’t have asked – after all he’d been living with Chris rent-free and that was more than enough. Chris was massively relieved, almost in tears. He told George that he fully understood George’s position too and how difficult things were for him, and he could only thank him for what he’d said. Since then, Chris tells me, they’ve grown a lot closer as friends, and, since it was obvious to him that George had been sincere in his apology, they now understood each other better than ever.

A happy ending? Well sort of. But, at the same time, what better example of two of the many obstacles that the society we live in puts up against humans living lives of comfort, fulfilment and cooperation? The first of these obstacles is the physical barrier known as borders (or frontiers), separating families from one another and separating us all from our fellow human beings who happen, purely by chance, to have been born on a different part of the planet. The second is the noxious effect of money, the ultimate arbiter of how people live, where they live, and, in many cases, whether they live or die. Left to ourselves, most of us would exhibit the natural human tendency to be pro-social and empathetic, as in the case of my friend Chris with his guest George. But how difficult is that made by the system of division into states that capitalism demands and the extraordinary inequality based on the possession of wealth and resources that is its hallmark and that means that, while some individuals control fortunes larger than the economic output of entire countries, other human beings struggle to obtain adequate food, shelter, clean water and healthcare. What stands out clearly is that we need to collectively decide to dispense with this system and replace it with a world of common ownership of all resources and free access to all goods and services. While some may say that such an arrangement is some way off, that does not make it any the less worth striving for.

Howard Moss