Letter: Defender of Children's Allowances (1949)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Buxton, Derbyshire. 

To the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain.

Dear Sirs,

Thanks for renewal form of subscription to your Socialist Standard. I won't trouble to renew it, however, as I have had reluctantly to come to the conclusion you can never do very much good with your present line of propaganda despite the fact that few are more keenly anxious for the objects towards which you strive than I am.

I was first utterly disgusted with you for your pamphlet against Family Allowances, which on a generous scale of about 10s. a week for each child till school leaving age and 20s. a week for every wife who spends her time at home looking after it, is perhaps the thing which the working classes are most in need of and which would do them more good than anything else which can be easily imagined or applied.

Hunger, or semi-hunger, rags, dirt, squalor, privation, and misery, have been the unfair lot of the children and the hard working wives and mothers and children of the lower paid of the working class men ever since the Industrial Revolution. And you must know it as well as I do.

It has largely been, not inevitable, but due to the wages policy of the Trade Unions and the mental attitude of so many working class men towards their wives and families. How many of them love to talk about “A MAN, and his dependents” as if the latter were very much inferior animals to his noble self.

All through your pamphlet there was hardly a glimmer of an idea that a man’s wife and children were of any more consequence than so many back yard domestic animals which he, as a “worker” “chose” to go in for keeping—and which was nobody else’s business but his own.

You opposed family allowances because they would depress wages.

But they want depressing and in some cases fairly heavily. It is a crying scandal that young sons in their twenties, living at home, and with no family responsibilities at all, can, in some skilled trades, be bringing in about £10 a week at present which they are not in any position to spend in any sensible way. And there may be two or three such sons in one working class household, as well as the father’s similar earnings.

Against this, family men of 40 who are called ”unskilled labourers,” may have to keep themselves, their wife and half a dozen children on a mere £4 10s. a week. (1 have omitted the inadequate 5s. children’s allowances since October, 1946.)

This excess money these young unmarried men are given is a crippling load on our industrial life; and the problem they feel to get rid of it somehow is the chief cause of the scandalous amount of money spent in betting and gambling—not to mention smoking and drinking of which the young men probably don’t do more than their share. The money they have which they can’t get rid of is the chief cause of so much of their absenteeism from work; for while they stick tamely at work they haven't any opportunities to fling their money about,

The system is all wrong. Wages, as negotiated by Trade Unions, and as paid by employers, should be on the assumption that the "worker” has no one except himself (or herself) to keep. Support for his wife and children should come directly from the State like his (or her) old age pensions.

So you can understand a bit why I don’t think your line of propaganda is any good or worth supporting.

I am,

Yours faithfully,

Albert Eagle.

P.S.—It seems hard to have to conclude that the chief enemies of the welfare of the wives and children of the lower paid members of the working classes are not capitalists at all but the men of the working classes who through their Trade Unions and various other Labour and Socialist societies (like the S.P.G.B.) to which they belong have long opposed Family Allowances. Chief, of course, are the young unmarried men themselves who "don’t see why a married man should be paid more merely because he has a family.”

These young men want showing that the wages they are enjoying were negotiated on their behalf on the assumption that they had a wife and children to keep; and that they are enjoying money that has been obtained on their behalf by open deception. To put it bluntly these young men are simply enjoying stolen loot. It can hardly be described otherwise.

If you would do something to remedy this evil your propaganda would be doing some good. A.E.

Reply.

In the pamphlet ”Family Allowances: A Socialist Analysis” (S.P.G.B., 2d.) it was argued that the grant of children’s allowances would not solve the poverty problem for the reason that the poverty of the working class is not caused by the cost of maintaining children out by the exploitation of the working class that necessarily goes with capitalism. It was pointed out that children’s allowances in practice are not a clear addition to wages but tend to be given in place of wage increases. Evidence was given in the pamphlet that prominent advocates of children’s allowances admitted this and were in favour of reducing the wages of the unmarried in order to meet the cost of paying the allowances.

We can add to this now by pointing to the fact that since the present government introduced the allowances the same government, in face of rising costs of living, has been using all its influence to discourage claims for wage increases.

The above letter from a supporter of children’s allowances dots the i’s and crosses the t’s of our argument by telling us that ”wages want depressing and in some cases fairly heavily.” He also tells us that "the chief enemies of the welfare of the wives and children of the lower paid members of the working classes are not capitalists at all but the men of the working classes.”

It is understandable when the spokesmen of the capitalist class advocate children’s allowances on the ground that it costs the capitalists less to give allowances to families with more than one child than to give a wage increase to the whole working-class, thus in effect lowering the standard of living of one section of the working class. But what are we to think when a member of the working class uses the same argument? He thinks it a crying scandal ”that some young workers in skilled trades should actually be able to earn £10 a week, but says not a word about the members of the propertied class who, married or single, can receive £10, £20 or £100 a week without working at all!

Blind in one eye he directs his attack against unmarried men in his own class but says nothing about the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class.

When we are told that the S.P.G.B. pamphlet shows ”hardly a glimmer of an idea that a man’s wife and children were of any more consequence than so many backyard domestic animals” he shows that he has not at all appreciated our case that the only solution for the poverty problem is the abolition of capitalism and with it the abolition of the wages system. Under Socialism, on the principle of ”From each according to his capacity: to each according to his need,” wives and children who are now dependent on the inadequate wages of working-class husbands will for the first time have free access to the products of society and really will enjoy as human beings all that social production has to offer. Capitalism never will do this whether the workers fight for children’s allowances or for general wage increases—though as we have shown in the pamphlet the latter is the better method under capitalism.

We must add that our correspondent is clearly mistaken when he claims that few are more keenly anxious than himself “for the objects towards which you strive." He obviously has not understood what is the Socialist objective of the S.P.G.B. 

Ed. Comm.