News in Review: Sir William (1963)

The News in Review column from the February 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir William

Nobody who has troubled to keep an eye on the trade union movement will have fainted with surprise at the news that the New Year Honours List brought a knighthood to William Carron.

Carron, president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (motto, carved impressively on the presidential chair, “Be United And Industrious”), is the latest in a lengthening line of trade union knights, preceded by such as Tom O’Brien of NATKE and Tom Williamson (now a life peer) of NUGMW.

One thing these men have in common. They are all what is known as “moderate” trade union leaders. And “moderate” is another of the euphemisms beloved of the Capitalist press.

It means a trade union leader who can be relied upon to angrily denounce unofficial strikes. It means the sort of leader who suffers the wage restrictions of a Labour government and who co-operates in drives for greater efficiency and productivity. A man who thinks that it is a good idea for the unions to be represented on the National Economic Development Council and other such bodies, which are designed to promote co-operation between the workers and the employers. It means a man who does his best to ignore the fact that there is a class struggle in Capitalist society.

But this is not what trade unions are there for. The unions should concern themselves with protecting and advancing the interests of their members. They should be struggling for higher pay, shorter hours, better working conditions, and so on. But where do honours come into all this?

Honours are reserved for the people who have served Capitalism in some way or other; they are the establishment’s mark of appreciation.

It is a bitter commentary on the standing of the trade unions today, and on the standard of consciousness of their members, that the men at the top are so often coming to wear a coronet or some other bauble to show that Capitalism has looked upon them and found them good.

Hailsham and Unemployment 

Lord Hailsham, the government’s odd-job man, has won himself a reputation of being a showy, energetic politician. How, then, to describe his appointment as the man to look into the unemployment problem in the North-East?

Was this Action? Or just another odd job?

Certainly there was nothing new about the idea. The 1929 Labour government had not one but three ministers looking after their unemployment problem. At least one of these was showy and at least one other was energetic. But the unemployment figures still kept on going up.

Why only the North-East? True, unemployment is relatively high there; but so it is in Scotland and Wales. Whatever claims the government might make about the North-East being different, the fact is that, as a problem of Capitalism, unemployment is the same in one area as it is in another.

Does Mr. Macmillan have a soft spot for the North-East? He told the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce ". . . human needs are as great in the North-East, in Scotland or Merseyside, and even in Birmingham. They are the boys who fought and died and suffered and as long as I have anything to do with the conduct of affairs I shall regard them as of the highest priority . . .  I felt that the appointment of a senior active member of the government . . .  was needed and I believe it will be received with pleasure in that locality 1 know and love so well.” (Macmillan was M.P. for Stockton-on-Tees until 1945, when Stockton showed that it did not love him well enough to send him back to Westminster.)

But apart from Macmillan’s sob stuff, no government cures unemployment because it loves the workers. Indeed, no government cures unemployment at all, because it is something which wrapped up with the basic nature of Capitalism, coming and going as economic conditions dictate.

No politician has ever been able to control these conditions. That is why Hailsham must prove no better than the men who have tackled the problem before him. He can find out how much unemployment there is in the North-East. He can discover that unemployment hurts. He may even realise the basic reason for it. But as far as he is concerned that will not be for publication.


Escape from the Dole

Short of war itself, the best recruiting sergeant has always been poverty. In the thirties, the prospect of endless waiting in the dole queues drove thousands of workers into the armed forces. Even the army canteen seemed like a slap-up West End restaurant after months of bread and marge and tea.

Those were the days when for every man accepted there were half-a-dozen turned away. Years of poverty and malnutrition had left large numbers of youths unable to pass the medical, so much so that even the Tory government became alarmed that there might not be enough efficient cannon fodder for the next holocaust.

Things have been different since 1945. Capitalist “prosperity” has left the services begging for recruits. Pay has had to be raised and conditions improved, but even so the response has been poor. Until now.

Now British capitalism is not doing so well. There is pressure on wages, a harder line against the unions and, most threatening of all, the return of unemployment and the dole queues.

What a sudden change this has caused! Only a little while ago we were hearing tales of the sumptuous married quarters being provided to encourage wives to persuade their husbands to join up. Now we are told that there have been so many applications that the authorities have decided to refuse almost all married volunteers.

Recruiting on Tees-side is apparently up 33 per cent, in Manchester 32 per cent, in Preston 40 per cent. Northern Ireland has also had “a good year” and Western Command recruitment has increased by a fifth.

Yet another grim development to remind us of those “bad old days" that were supposed to have gone for ever.

Skybolt

The Tories care. Many of them have clung to an independent British nuclear force as a sign that this country is not quite finished as a world power. Skybolt was meant to keep this force going until 1970, which will be some years after the Soviet defences are expected to render useless the missiles currently in service with the R.A.F.

The backbench Defence Committee of Conservative M.P.s. were especially glum at this latest blow to their ancient illusions. Macmillan and Thorneycroft had to do a lot of explaining to them.

The Labour Party cares. Gleefully, their spokesmen leapt upon what they love to call the “Tory mess" over what they like to call “defence." (Who, or what, was Skybolt supposed to defend?) Labour should have been as glum as the Tories. They were the party which started the British nuclear force, including the bombs which they grumble about, when the Tory government tests them.

In fact, all the Capitalist parties care about Skybolt. They all had some sort of policy on it, which they coughed up m the shape of advice for the government.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not care about the Skybolt row. We do not care whether Capitalism fights its wars with missiles which come from the air and hit the ground or from the sea and hit the air or from anywhere to hit anywhere else.

We think it is quite horrible that intelligent men and women should spend their time, all over the world, in thinking up nightmares like nuclear bombs and missiles. We think it is ridiculous that other grown up people should solemnly argue about which missile is the cheapest or the fastest or the most destructive. We think it is even more ridiculous that these people should be admired by the majority of workers as wise, good men.

We know that the best thing that could happen would be for the world working class to abolish Capitalists, with all its weapons and leaders.

Who cares about that? We do.


Medical Research

The medical profession are having a tough time in cracking the problem of replacing a diseased kidney with one which has been taken from another person. Up to the present, they have had very little success with this operation, and what they have had has been mainly confined to grafts between identical twins or other very close relatives.

If the doctors could solve this one, it would mean that a lot of people who are now condemned to die would be saved, because a diseased kidney can be a killer.

Research into the problem is going on all the time, in particular at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, where the work has been supported by a government grant. Then last month there came the news that this grant would run out in April and. that it was not likely to be renewed.

Dr. David Spencer, who was involved some months ago in a dramatic and unsuccessful kidney operation, made a public appeal for funds and soon got the money he had asked for.

And how much was this? A hundred million? Well, no. One million, then? Wrong again. A measly thirty thousand pounds. But apparently the government had decided that they just could not afford this amount.

Is the Exchequer broke, then? How much, say, do they spend each year on armaments? Thirty thousand? Well, no. Hundred million, then? Wrong again. A whacking great £1,709,000,000.

There are plenty of people, all of them supporters of Capitalism, who can get indignant about this. But it is most illogical of them to do so.

Because it is typical of Capitalism's priorities that, when the queue forms for the allocation of society’s resources, death and destruction should be somewhere up front and human health and safety somewhere near the back.

Socialism could, and would, get things in their right order. That is something which should be driven home to anybody who would rather beat disease than build a hydrogen bomb.