A tale of two tyrannies (1988)

A Short Story from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack and Jacek meet on a train. Jack is a true blue British Tory; Jacek is a member of the Polish Communist Party. Jack loves his Queen and has a big picture of Churchill on his wall, with a smaller one of Thatcher next to his bed. Jacek goes out and gets drunk each year on the day when Poland became a "socialist country". He has a big picture of Stalin on his wall and a smaller one of Jaruzelski next to his bed. Every Sunday Jack can be found upon his knees in the local C of E Hall of Lies. On Sundays you can be sure to find Comrade Jacek on his knees in the Catholic Church, for though he appreciates the guidance of Lenin regarding the affairs of this world, he still seeks divine assistance on his preparation for the passage to the illusory next world. Jack is reading The Daily Mail which always gives him his lies in good plain English. Jacek reads the official state newspaper which most Poles know to be as dishonest as it is dull. The two men get talking, the way that often happens on long, boring train journeys.

Jacek has been reading about the attempt by P&O to smash the National Union of Seamen. He reads about how the company, with dictatorial arrogance, simply sacked its wage slaves for daring to take trade-union action. When the men formed picket lines in order to prevent scabs from being brought in to take away their jobs the police were brought in to exercise their usual scab-herding powers. When the NUS decided to ballot its members they were told by the phoney democrats of the British government that it is illegal to conduct a secret ballot as to whether to go on strike and if such a ballot was held the union would be taken to court. He read about how the judges in the High Court had decided to empower the state to rob the NUS of its legally collected funds. As Jacek read the report he became angry. It was genuine anger. It was indignation which every self-respecting member of the working class ought to feel when he or she sees a government. representing the privileged and powerful. using its power of coercion to persecute workers who dare to combine in their own defence. Jacek tells Jack of his sense of anger, but Jack, who has had mental blinkers fitted many years ago, courtesy of his education and exposure to the press, is full of rage for a different reason. He tries to explain to Jacek that these seamen are nothing but agitators — troublemakers — sociology graduates, quite possibly. Mrs Thatcher has a duty to the nation to ensure that these unions do not become too powerful. Why, if they are not kept in check, the next thing they will expect is to own and control the ships that they have worked on all their lives. And, as every properly educated Englishman knows, the right to own and control ships must belong to the likes of Sir Jeffrey Sterling, who has never had to work on a ship in his entire parasitical life.

There is a period of uneasy silence. It is quite clear that these two passengers will not see eye to eye. Jacek attempts to make light conversation about how he enjoyed fighting alongside the British in the last war; it was so pleasant for Churchill's wage slaves and Stalin's wage slaves to be joined in the common fight in defence of "democracy". The irony occurred to neither of them.

Just as the train was passing through a tunnel somewhere near Didcot Jack gasps in astonishment. Jacek thinks that perhaps his travelling companion has swallowed a pip from his South African orange. But no, he has been reading about how the police were sent in to the Nowa Huta steel works in Poland. With what brutality they used their truncheons against men and women whose only crime was to attempt to organise in a trade union — Solidarity — which is not run by the state bosses. On May Day Lech Walesa of Solidarity called upon the workers of Poland, "I demand of you solidarity with the Nowa Huta strikers tomorrow in your shipyards, in your ports and in your factories'. Last November the Polish government had held a referendum to test the workers' support for a massive increase in food prices in order to increase state profits so that debts to the Western banks could be paid off. The government failed to win a majority in the referendum. but this did not deter the undemocratic dictators: between February and April the price increases were instituted and this has led to nationwide protests and the biggest strike wave since 13 December 1981 when martial law was introduced in order to smash Solidarity. Across Poland the most foul thuggery has been carried out on the orders of the so-called Communist dictatorship; the workers have to be kept in their place. Jack, though never a supporter of strikes when they are in “his own country" is full of admiration for the heroic Polish strikers. Inconsistent as he is, Jack is right to support these brave men and women who will not be brought to their knees by a police state. Every worker everywhere must admire and show sympathy with our brothers and sisters in the state-capitalist countries who are robbed and oppressed in the name of socialism, just as we are in Britain in the name of democracy. Jack explains to Jacek that the Polish government is clearly an enemy of the majority of Polish people. Jacek is infuriated by such a senseless comment: did Jack not realise that these wreckers in Solidarity are out to cause economic ruin and sabotage — and anyway, most of them are probably in the pay of the CIA.

The two men look out of opposite windows of the train, refusing to say another word. They look at their reflections in the glass and catch glimpses of each other. Somewhere down the other end of the train —the end which is labelled “First Class", where the seats are comfier and the stewards will actually bring stale tuna fish sandwiches to where you are sitting we find Mr Ponsonby-Crutch and Mr Polotsky, each a respected member of the business community. Ponsonby-Crutch — or Ponsy, as he is known to the assembled idlers at the gentlemen's club where he occasionally sleeps away his afternoons — is attempting to fix up a joint venture with Polotsky who represents the Polish Trade Ministry, and does not smoke Cuban cigars simply for reasons of ideological solidarity. The two men talk as friends, realising, as representatives of capital must, that ideological differences must not be allowed to interfere with the higher goal of making profits. In a moment of relaxation the two men speak of their respective workforces. Ponsy thinks that the British wage slaves are in "pretty good shape" (a description he has been known to apply to his race horse, Dummy), but there are still a few recalcitrant types who need to be sorted out. With the aid of the police, the anti-union laws, the judges and workers forced to scabbing by the poverty of long-term unemployment. he feels confident that disruptive elements will be weeded out. Ponsy calls it "giving them the miners' treatment”. Polotsky sympathises. His government knows what it feels like to have the noble needs of profit-stealing interrupted by the anti-social antics of the unpatriotic minority. General Jaruzelski, being a military man, will spare no blood in showing the Polish workers who the masters are. Ponsy sighs longingly, wishing that his own government would show a little more of that kind of uncompromising commitment to the national interest.

Britain is a capitalist country and P&O are doing what any self-respecting capitalists will do: tyrannising their workers until every last drop of profit can be wrung from them. Let the drowned corpses of those workers who fell victim at Zeebrugge to the spirit of Free Enterprise stand as monuments to the consequences of free enterprise. Poland is also a capitalist country; its form of tyranny is state capitalism, but its differences with the economies of the West are outweighed by its similarities. In Poland the so-called Communist state locks up trade unionists who do not obey its rule and uses brutal force, indistinguishable from that used by British and other capitalist states, in defence of property and profit. Workers of the world have one single class interest; capitalists of the world, while competing like beasts of the jungle, have a common interest in keeping the workers in a condition of submissive wage slavery. We must not let them succeed in Dover or in Gdansk — in every part of the world the forces of capital must be met with the force of organised socialists whose sole aim is to claim for the inhabitants of the earth all of the resources in and on the earth. Then, with its cause abolished, tyranny will die, in all its forms.

Steve Coleman