The Review Column: Collapse in South Arabia (1967)

The Review Column from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Collapse in South Arabia

The news of the collapse of the Federal government in South Arabia, and of the British acceptance that they must now deal with one or other of the outlawed nationalist movements there, induced a weird if well-known feeling that we have been here before.

The British presence in the South Arabian Federation, and their propping up of the government, revolved around the importance of the Aden base in protecting British interests in the oilfields of the Arabian Gulf.

It was for this that British soldiers were killed in the area—and themselves did a fair bit of killing. The battle between the occupying troops and the Nationalists had all the usual nastiness, including the atrocities committed by both sides.

It might have been possible for the British “experts” who were running the show to consider the history of similar situations in many other parts of the world—Ireland, Algeria, Cyprus to name only three.

The lesson they might have drawn from all these conflicts is that it is impossible to suppress a nationalist movement for ever and that, after a lot of blood has been shed, a lot of damage done, a lot of hatred provoked on both sides, the occupying government comes to recognise the inevitable and does business with the people it has been calling cowardly terrorists.

Then the “terrorists” became respectable. They attend conferences in sleek limousines, they smile at, and shake hands with, the men who so recently placed a price on their head. They often go on to apply their own suppression to former comrades who rebel against what they consider a sell-out, or who disagree on some other issue.

All this now seems likely to happen in South Arabia. Which not only goes to show how blind are the “experts”, but also how persistent, tangled and poisonous are the conflicts of capitalism, and to what murderous lengths men are driven in their efforts to resolve them.

Half a million unemployed

As the Ministry of Labour’s doleful figures come out, let it not be forgotten that it is a Labour government which says that it has created half a million unemployed.

The Labour Party hold the theory that a government can produce, or abolish, unemployment at will. Whether this is true or not is beside the point, which is that Labour are saying they are responsible for the rise in unemployment, that it has come about as a result of their deliberate policy.

It is not convenient, now, for them to remember some of their promises. Like this one, by James Callaghan at their 1965 conference:

… he had not joined the Labour Party to create unemployment. He was certain that the measures being taken, through regional planning, were the right ones to maintain full employment. (The Guardian, 1/10/65.)

It is not convenient, now, for Labour to remember that the wage freeze was always supposed to be the alternative to unemployment. This was Callaghan, again at the 1965 conference:

This problem of getting increased productivity would be solved either by unemployment and substantial deflation, or by a prices and incomes policy: there is no other way.” (The Guardian, 1/10/65.)

As it turned out, the working class have got it all; a wage freeze, unemployment and what is called “deflation”.

Presumably, if they were pressed on the matter, the Labour Party would still say that this is Socialism. For one thing, their policies seem to be holding the support of a majority of trade union leaders, although what these same leaders would say about the same policies if they came from a Conservative government hardly bears thinking about.

To some extent, then, Labour have had things their way. What it amounts to is that in 1964 there was a dirty job to be done for the British capitalist class and Labour have done it.

The TUC, does it matter?

“I do not think the . . . motion really means a great deal in this context, one way or the other.” That was George Woodcock at this year’s TUC and there are no prizes for guessing why he has suddenly discovered that some of the decisions of this annual gathering don’t really matter.

A long time ago, the Labour Party leadership made it clear that whenever its Annual Conference passed an inconvenient motion it suddenly lost all power and significance as a conference. Only when its decisions were in line with official policy did the Conference become the democratic mouthpiece of a great movement.

Now, apparently, the same thing applies to the TUC. The motion Woodcock was referring to was one from the Shopworkers’ Union which, among other things, protested about unemployment, rising prices and the wage freeze.

It seemed certain that the motion was going to be passed —as it was, despite the application of “Carron’s Law” to the AEU vote—so of course the only thing left for the politically motivated TUC leaders to do was to give advance notice that it didn’t mean anything.

There is no record that Woodcock was equally clear about the TUC’s irrelevance when they later approved motions which supported the government—one on the Wednesday from the ETU which recorded appreciation of the government’s efforts to reduce overseas spending and one on Friday, moved by Carron, which said that the trade union movement should support the government.

It is fair to ask why the TUC bothers to have a Congress, if it is allowed to pass only those resolutions which are approved by the platform. It is fair to ask whether the TUC leaders think it democratic that any decisions it makes which are inconvenient to a Labour government should be ignored.

Perhaps the solution is to hold the Congress only when there is a Conservative government. Then Woodcock and the other leaders can accept the critical motions without any qualms.

Unless, of course, the union membership become aware of their standing and interests under capitalism—and of the job the unions should be doing.