A Challenge to Mr. Bevin on Post-War Reconstruction (1942)

From the August 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cutting away from the vague generalities of most of the Government spokesmen Mr. Ernest Bevin, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Chamber of Trade in London on July 15th, 1942, made two definite statements about post-war reconstruction, one on behalf of the Government and the other on his own behalf. The first need not detain us long. He said that “it was the policy of the Government to try to establish for the post-war period minimum wage regulations for all forms of employment” (Times, July 16th, 1942). In form it is somewhat ambiguous since it is not clear whether it is intended to be a permanent arrangement or only one “for the post-war period.” The probability is that it is meant as a pledge of a permanent policy. For the rest it is interpreted by the Manchester Guardian to mean not “universal standards such as those laid down by New Deal legislation in the United States, but . . . the British method of covering all industry with trade boards and collective agreements.” (Manchester Guardian.; July 17th.)

“Mr. Bevin,” says the Guardian, “at least is trying to do something now that will be ready before the good intentions have time to fade.” After the last war the good intentions did fade; so that the Labour Party in office discarded its own minimum wage policy drafted when in opposition. Let us assume, however, that this time the policy will be carried out, what does it amount to ? It will be a gain to a number of badly organised workers but it is only necessary to look at the past experience of such arrangements, with their low minimum rates, the exceptions for workers not up to the average level of health and efficiency, and the wholesale evasions, to see that it is a pledge of very modest value to the workers. Mr. Bevin’s second point is more interesting. He said: “At the end of the war we should be able to buy goods only for goods. The rentier, comfortably living on interest, would certainly be gone. It will mean that we shall have a nation at work, and that will not be an unhealthy thing.” (Daily Herald, July 16th, 1942.) The Times and Manchester Guardian reported him slightly differently. Instead of saying that the rentier would certainly be gone, they have it “would be entirely gone.” This, it will be observed, was not a pledge on behalf of the Government, but a statement of what Mr. Bevin believes will take place and of which he approves. We may digress for a moment to quote the Concise Oxford Dictionary about the rentier. The definition is “Person living on rente, person not needing to earn his living.” And “rente” is explained as of French origin, meaning “Income, especially that consisting of life annuity or dividends.”

So now we may seem to be getting somewhere. People living on property incomes, not needing to earn their living, will be gone ! (Incidentally if Mr. Bevin feared that there might be some propertied persons who would manage to escape the healthy necessity of working, he has already to hand a powerful instrument of which as Minister of Labour he has had experience. We refer to the prosecution of absentees from war work, fined or jailed under Defence Regulations.)

We are, however, going much too fast. Mr. Bevin has not yet convinced his fellow members of the Government, and was disowned by the Chancellor on the radio (2 Aug.) We may safely rule out any mass stampede on the part of the propertied class to surrender voluntarily their property and the income derived from it. An alternative is that it may be taken away from them. The S.P.G.B. has throughout its existence urged that the conversion of private ownership of the means of production and distribution into common ownership is the only way to solve the poverty problem; but Mr. Bevin does not subscribe to this. He is a member of the Labour Party, and that Party, far from seeking to abolish the rentier, prepares to establish him more firmly than ever by setting up state industries or public utility corporations and compensating the present owners with Government bonds, or stocks guaranteed by the Government. Has Mr. Bevin noticed, for example, how the rumours of nationalisation of the railways gladdened the hearts of the railway stockholders ? The Sunday Express (June 7th, 1942) reported “a slow upward move in home rail stocks. The buying is based on the theory that Britain’s railways will never return wholly to private ownership.” The Express went on : —

“That would have most important results for the 500,000 investors in railway stocks. Instead of a fluctuating income dependent on operating results, their revenues would be fixed.”

In short, Mr. Bevin, these stockholders are counting on the Labour Party establishing them in permanent security as rentiers.

Again on July 8th, 1942, the News-Chronicle reported another rise in railway stocks, and said : —

“. . . the current market explanation of the recovery yesterday was that it was inspired by statements of trade union officials that plans for the unification of the railways under a public board are well under way.”

It is then established that the rentier class, far from expecting Mr. Bevin’s Party to deprive them of their wealth and income, and make them work, are confidently looking to that Party for security as rentiers in the difficult post-war period.

There is, of course, a third alternative—that the rentier class have already disappeared or are about to disappear. It is fantastic to consider such a thing, but there are many supposedly well informed people who believe it to be true. There is Mr. J. B. Priestley, who writes that the war-time changes “are tending to bring people nearer to one level, both economically and socially. The differences between classes are much less marked” (Picture Post, June 27th, 1942). There is Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who, commenting on Priestley’s statement, approved of it and added: “I also hope and believe that such changes will continue after the war and on a great scale” (Picture Post, July 4th).

Mr. Priestley claimed that “many of the worst features of our pre-war life have vanished and are rapidly dwindling. For example, our fantastically gross and really sinful inequalities.” Then there Mr. Ivor Brown in the Manchester Guardian (June 6th, 1942), who fancies that we have already slipped into Socialism. “A 10/- income tax (with surtax in proportion) has given us what the Socialist orators could never do, Socialism in our time.” Ownership of a farm or factory is, he says, now only nominal, the owner “is just the employee of one or more Ministries.”

One can only gasp at the self-deception and short vision of such people and wonder how they manage to get like that in defiance of all the evidence that they are wrong. Presumably they knew about the pre-war inequality, that under 2 per cent. of the population owned about two-thirds of the accumulated wealth, and that three-quarters of the population owned between them not more than one-thirteenth of the wealth. Let us grant for the moment that at present the annual increase of the wealth of the propertied class is drastically curtailed in many instances by war-time taxation (as it was in 19l4—1918) but have they never heard how these fortunes leapt up again in the years after the last war ? Do they think that the rich are no longer with us ? Who do they think paid £6 17s a bottle for Benedictine at Christie’s sale on May 22nd, 1942 (Daily Telegraph May 23rd): £50 for six bottles of brandy, and liqueurs at £27 a dozen ? Did they not read of the £100,000 that was bid by a London builder for 130 bloodstock racehorses that had belonged to the late Lord Glenelly ? (Daily Express, July 15th, 1942). Do they ever look at the amounts left in the wills published in the Press ? On seven days chosen at random in July the Times published particulars of 55 wills. The amounts ranged from £12,000 to £426,000, and totalled £4,060,000—an average of £75,000 a head. Let us make the necessary allowance for death duties, ranging up to 50 per cent, and more on the millionaire fortunes, and even then ask Mr. Priestley if he really imagines that the position of these people “tends” to equality with that of the mass of the population. Again let him look at Whitaker’s Almanack, 1942, and see the big estates left in 1941. There are 13 of £500,000 or more, ranging up to one which is over £4,500,000. They average about £1,500,000 per head. Ten of them are over £1,000,000. Does Mr. Priestley not know the authoritative estimate that three out of four adult persons who die each year do not possess even £100 to leave to their heirs ? Does Mr. Priestley not know that in 1939 the average wage of an adult male worker in industry was less than 70/- a week, with hundreds of thousands earning far less than that. Does he not know that earnings have kept pace with the increased cost of living only where long hours of overtime are being worked ? Did he see the comment of the Birmingham magistrate on the disgrace that a married lorry driver, after 19 years’ service on the Great Western Railway, is receiving only 68/6 a week? (Daily Herald, July 16th.) Does he really affirm that there is not fantastic inequality between the position of the workers and the position of the propertied class, in war or in peace ?

This brings us back to Mr. Bevin. Does Mr. Bevin stand for the abolition of property incomes of all kinds ? Does he think this will take place in the post-war settlement ? Since his fellow Cabinet Ministers do not share that view, how does he propose to convince them ? And after that how does he propose to win the Labour Party away from its programme of stabilising the position of the rentier class? Does he agree with the S.P.G.B. that Socialism, which necessarily involves the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and distribution and all forms of property income, is the only remedy for the problems of the working class ? If the answer is yes, why is he a supporter of other programmes ? It the answer is no, what is the programme (apart from the one item of minimum wage regulation) which he believes will solve the problem without Socialism.

We make the confident forecast that no other policy will solve the problem. The propertied class will, under pressure, do various small things to meet working class discontent, but they will never be got off the workers’ backs until a Socialist majority determines to have Socialism. The post-war world will be very much like the world that went before unless the working class themselves determine otherwise.

Edgar Hardcastle