Review: February 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

As the miners ended their strike in victory, it became clear that there had been a widespread miscalculation. The strength of the strikers — their solidarity, the effectiveness of their picketing — was underestimated by the government, by the press and, incidentally, also by the Socialist Standard. This strike was an example of effective trade union action; it was solid and well directed so that it demanded a rapid settlement. For the government, this defeat of their wages policy may be a chance for them to regroup and consider their next field of battle. The high level of unemployment is not the only similarity between the present and the twenties, when an apparently victorious miners’ strike preceded the General Strike and a victory for the capitalist class over the workers.

One of the most cynical statements on the strike came from Labour leader Harold Wilson, who supported the miners because they are a special case. It is not so long ago that Wilson was Prime Minister in a government which fought bitterly against strikers, whether their case was “special’’ (whatever that may mean) or not. In perhaps the most famous strike of Wilson’s time as Premier, the seamen were also said to be “special”. Their wages were comparatively low, they worked long hours often in unpleasant and dangerous conditions. And, like the miners, there was a large fund of goodwill for them, in memory of their particular suffering during the war. Wilson’s reaction to all of this was to oppose the seamen and, in one of his most wretched speeches, condemn them as misled by a small band of politically motivated wreckers. There is no reason to think that he is sincere now in his support for the miners; he is simply hoping to drive another nail into Heath’s well-studded coffin.

Abroad

President Nixon took off for his visit to China, which will probably do him no harm in this election year, declaring that he went with the object of talking about peace. The fact that the admittedly capitalist America can find common ground with the allegedly socialist China is proof that both countries have the same social system. In fact, what Nixon went to talk about was war. The subjects the leaders will discuss will be the clashing interests of their two capitalist powers in the Far East, how to carve up that piece of the world, how to establish more contact between the two states so that the processes of capitalist diplomacy can be more smoothly carried on. These are the superficial issues which spring from the conflicts of capitalism which are the cause of modern war. Whatever settlements Nixon may negotiate it is safe to say that other conflicts will emerge, if not between China and America then perhaps between the two in alliance and some other line-up. The plain fact, which is often overlooked amid all the emotion and the lies at such times, is that capitalism is a society of conflict and that war is its normality.

In Rhodesia the Smith government showed its racist teeth again in the imprisonment and ill-treatment of the Todds. The Smith government imprisons people without even the right of a trial, which most capitalist governments allow and which is a valuable safeguard, because it is a racist and therefore an openly repressive regime. But this type of imprisonment is a common method under capitalism. In the dictatorships of Eastern Europe it happens all the time and over this side of the world, the British government has of course used the same method in Northern Ireland. What this means is that a capitalist state will fight ruthlessly when it is threatened and that none are above using such methods.

Politics

The government’s narrow majority on the Common Market caused a tremendous uproar, mainly from Labour M.P.s who were screaming with fury like the baby whose bottle is stolen; they saw themselves robbed of a chance of power over British capitalism by the votes of a few Liberals who had done no more than vote in the way they had always said they would vote. This puts the vote, and the so-called debate which preceded it, into its proper perspective — another piece of the great, boring, futile game of capitalist politics.

One who always played that game in an especially petulant style finally chucked it in. Ray Gunter, ex-Minister of Labour, left the Labour benches with a characteristically illiterate letter. Gunter used his position as a Minister to fight working class wage claims tooth and nail. He was a strong advocate of tougher controls on immigration and a supporter of the racist laws passed under the Wilson government. He sent his resignation at a time when he was staying at a posh hotel in Durban, as a guest of the racist government of South Africa. All of this, from a man who calls himself a socialist— and who got away with it because he was in a party which also takes that name while standing for capitalism with every inhumanity that implies.