End of a hero
Nobody could look less like it, but Menachem Begin is an adored national hero and Israel was swept with consternation and grief when he announced that, worn out in the service of its ruling class, he would throw in the job of prime minister.
The reaction showed that Jews are as susceptible to deception as workers elsewhere, in this case about the indispensable mystique of a political leader. For the emotions expressed at Begin’s retirement could not have been related to any of his achievements.
He leaves a deep mess of problems to his successor, as Israel is sunk in economic stagnation — like many other countries in the current slump — and bogged down in a long and expensive war.
Begin’s departure is a useful time to remember the kind of state Israel was supposed to become, when people like him were fighting a guerrilla war with the professed object of establishing it. It was claimed that, above all, Jewish people would have learned a unique lesson from their desperately sad history; the new state would be a haven of peace, equality and compassion.
It is not accidental that it has turned out to be very different from those noble, misconceived ideals. Israel is now the Middle East’s greatest military power (its arms industry is its biggest employer). It suppresses Arabs, hounds and terrifies Palestinians and, as in Beirut just over a year ago, it does not shrink from condoning genocide and massacre.
Far from opening the way to peace and compassion, Begin's time in office has prepared for the succession of Yitzhak Shamir, ex-member of the militant, murdering Stern gang and a hard-liner on matters political and military. If Shamir in time becomes a national hero like Begin it will mean that he too has kept to those noble ideals, that he has talked of humanity and peace while serving his ruling class through all necessary excesses of cruelty and destruction.
Fact
Some of the runners in the Labour Party leadership contest advocated a national minimum wage, with Roy Hattersley leading the way with assurances that it would bring . . a more equal society . . . narrow the gap between rich and poor . . and Michael Meacher claiming that it was “a price which can be paid”.
Fact. A national minimum wage of a sort has been in existence in this country ever since Tory loony Keith Joseph was in charge of the Department of Health and Social Security, at least that's what they called it. Joseph brought in Family Income Supplement, a state benefit designed to ensure that nobody in work — earning a wage — would fall below a certain defined level. It didn’t work.
Fact. The Labour candidates are discovering that poverty still exists in this country after most of them have been members of past Labour governments which got in power partly on an assurance that they had a simple solution to the problem. That didn't work either.
Eyeless in power
From Thatcher’s first complaints of grit in the eyes to the private surgery, there intervened only one week. Although the condition remained unnoticed by Thatcher's doctor until a few days before the operation, it had been spotted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain many years previously.
Socialists detected the presence of the Prime Minister’s infamous blind eye from the very start of her political career. It is a malady she shares with every MP who has ever taken a seat in Parliament; it is an affliction with both advantages and disadvantages.
While she and her fellow members maintain the capitalist system, it is a useful thing to be able to turn a blind eye to the human suffering this causes. Indeed, if it were not for this fortunate ailment how would our elected representatives subjugate any pangs of doubt they might feel?
How would they sleep if the glare of their own ambitions did not blind them to the degradation, pain and anxiety that capitalism pours on the exploited working class? If the visions of suffering that are better not seen could not be ignored by such a selective method of sight, would they not be campaigning for the end of such an inhumane system rather than paying homage to it?
When the working class cease to elect members with such imperfect sight and turn instead to men and women who have seen and analysed that which our contemporary MPs defensively refuse to acknowledge. then something will be done about its removal. The causes of working class suffering are known to all who have eyes to see.
NL
In the swamp
Colourful phrases do not spring easily to the lips of Len Murray so perhaps he did not describe the 1983 TUC's tendency to move away from the traditional connection with the Labour Party as “the last twitch of the dinosaurs”.
In any case there is no cause for excitement. for the TUC may at most abandon one outdated idea for another. To develop ties with the SDP/Liberal Alliance and to begin a dialogue with the dreaded Norman Tebbit instead of with the Labour Party hardly comes into the description of fresh, relevant and optimistic ideas.
Then there is the matter of the unions’ motivation. If they do break with Labour it will be because that party’s chances of power are so dismal that there is little to be gained from affiliation with them. Better to look for a likelier prospect, even to negotiate with the Tories if they are the people in power.
It would have been more encouraging if the delegates had discussed severing from the Labour Party through a recognition of the reasons for its futility. They might also have acknowledged the Labour Party’s miserable history of trying to force down workers’ living standards and of fighting against the unions. The fact that this was all done in the interests of the British ruling class provides a conclusive reason for the unions to break with Labour — indeed to oppose it with all their power.
A debate at the TUC which ranged around that sort of awareness would have been a sign of real evolution in the unions, perhaps the first stirrings of class-consciousness which would expose and discard all connections with all the parties of capitalism.
For the present that must be a dream; but the workers can make it come true. Meanwhile the present is less happy, as the unions remain in the primeaval intellectual swamps, a long way behind reality and a proper grasp of what must be done to solve society's problems.
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