CND’s '‘new” plan
Once upon a time there was an organisation, which stood for nuclear disarmament. A lot of people joined it and not all of them were beatniks or angrys out for a punch up with the cops. They did a lot of work and made a lot of fuss with their demonstrations in Trafalgar Square.
Some of this organisation’s members said that they were Socialists, but they thought that Socialism should wait because the first priority was to have capitalism get rid of its nuclear weapons.
When the Russians let off a whopping great bomb they went to the Soviet Embassy and said that they would not leave until they had an assurance that no more bombs would be tested. When it was time for the Embassy to close the police came and carried them out into the street.
They went on thinking that they could get capitalism to scrap its nuclear bombs.
Then the Cuba crisis came and everybody, including the organisation, got the wind up. A lot of people began to doubt the theory that the two disputing blocs of capitalism could keep the peace in a state of mutual terror, and they said so. They were a bit slow in this—Socialism had been pointing it out ever since the deterrent theory was born, which was a long time before the nuclear bomb came along.
So the CND dropped their own bomb. There is, they have decided, a new order of priorities. The first one is to get the support of as many of the deterrent-theory doubters as they can. They have guessed that this is unlikely to happen unless they modify their old policy.
The first urgency now, according to CND, is to limit nuclear weapons to Russia and America. Perhaps they have not noticed that these are the very two countries which are the most likely to use such weapons, because they are the countries who are currently disputing on a world-wide scale.
But the important point is that CND has gone the way of so many other organisations whose members said that they wanted Socialism, but thought that the revolution should wait until they had got some sort of reformed capitalism first.
All of them started out with a bold, dramatic policy which stirred up some support. Then the need to attract more members persuaded them to modify their policy and to keep it more in line with the requirements of capitalism.
Perhaps one day CND will end up like some of the others—a staid, responsible pillar of capitalist society, nuclear weapons and all.
This need be no fairy story. And there is no happy ending.
Supersonic Airliner
Among clouds of misgiving, with hardly a cheer raised for it, the project for an Anglo-French supersonic airliner —to be called the Concorde—has got off the ground.
The economics of the thing are dicy. The £150 million aircraft is the biggest—in size and money—aviation venture ever to have been launched in Europe.
The British and French governments hope that the Concorde, flying at around 1,500 miles an hour, will capture the market for big, fast, long range airliners which will be open when the last of the present type of jets are played out, in about seven years’ time.
But right now the American aircraft industry is examining the prospects for a Mach 3 airliner. If this project comes to reality the Anglo-French giant will probably be out of date a few years after its first flight and a lot of expensive aircraft will be up for sale at knock down prices.
This was the fate of the Britannias and the Comets, both of which have been beaten out of the market by the big American jets. BOAC, once bitten, is distinctly shy of the supersonic project. They will not buy it, they say, unless they are assured that ". . . the Anglo-French supersonic aircraft will be economically operable and competitive for a period equal to that currently used in accounting practice.”
But if there are uncertainties that the Concorde will make money, nobody doubts its ability to make a lot of noise. People who have been driven to distraction by the scream of the jets now have to look forward to supersonic booms rippling regularly over the country. (The more powerful American aeroplanes will probably be worse for noise than the Concorde.)
The government, of course, knows of this, but have shrugged the problem off. The damage from the booms, says Minister of Aviation Julian Amery, will be "negligible”—a sweet word, the meaning of which is gradually changing as politicians use it consistently to assure us that something which they know is harmful is actually almost good for us.
The British airlines, and the British aircraft industry, cannot afford to be left out of the scramble for speed and more speed, which for some of them is the only hope of making any profit. So they are committed to something which even by capitalism’s standards is unlikely to be a success.
By human standards the thing is a complete write-off. It makes us wonder what inhuman, stupid, pointless venture capitalism will think up next.
Unemployment
While Mr. Maudling talked, the unemployed figure went up and the number of vacant jobs went down, so that on a graph a great gap yawned between the two lines.
There were all manner of indications that this increase in unemployment is more serious than any other recent bout of it.
The total for November was the worst for that month since 1940. The number of wholly unemployed increased from mid-October to mid-November at over twice the normal seasonal rate. The Northern region had the highest percentage of unemployed since the Ministry of Labour began keeping regional figures, in 1949.
And all this was happening after the reductions in Bank Rate, after the easing of credit restrictions, after the cuts in purchase tax and the other government measures which, the City Editors so often tell us, cannot fail to stimulate the economy.
Yet the economy remains stubbornly unstimulated. Gloomed The Guardian on November 23rd last: ". . . business is no more confident now of good times ahead than it has been all summer . . . the New Year unemployment could reach a new post-war high. . .”
Now anyone with a moderately long memory will recall that the great, post-war security schemes were supposed to have taken the sting out of unemployment.
The fact is, though, that in one way the out of work are worse off now than they were before the war. A single man can now get £2 17s. 6d. from the dole which is about nineteen per cent. of his average earnings when he is in work. In 1924 the dole was 32 per cent, of average earnings: since then this percentage has steadily decreased.
The present day percentage of nineteen compares to 90 per cent. in Germany. 70 per cent. in Holland and 60 per cent. in Switzerland.
There is a simple way of summing this up. The promises which were made for capitalism during the last war—that life would be freer and more secure when the shooting had stopped—have been exposed.
It is still possible, even likely, that masses of workers in this country can be unemployed. Slumps are still around every corner. All the promises which are made for capitalism are empty lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment