Passing Show (1989)

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jockeying for position

Had he been a footballer, John Prescott would have been right under the moon about the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle last November. Perhaps as punishment for standing against Roy Hattersley for the deputy leadership, he lost his job as Energy spokesman and was instead put to shadowing the Ministry of Transport, which was not highly rated as fertile ground for a sprouting political ambition.

It did not help his case that Prescott, who looks and sounds like a bulldog about to savage an imprudent burglar, promised to be more aggressive in the conduct of the meaningless parliamentary sparring and larking which is called opposition to the government. The other hopefuls in Labour's seething ranks are more discreet than to make such criticisms of their leader. There is the eminently sober duo of John Smith and Gordon Brown, who would like to organise the financial affairs of British capitalism as Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is boyish, articulate Tony Blair, who has Prescott's old job as shadow Energy minister and who is a formidable TV performer — which means that he is precociously skilful at evading difficult questions while making the most of any similar evasion by an uncomfortable opponent. There is smooth Michael Meacher, who first made his name by discovering the amazing fact that however capitalism may be reformed there remain millions who suffer from the direr pressures of poverty. Meacher recently angered Labour's top brass by speaking out for the legalising of sympathetic strikes and secondary picketing, just as if the winter of discontent had never been and just as if his party is not now desperately trying to obscure its trade union connection.

These burgeoning ambitions are feeding off Labour's inability to seduce the voters away from what seems a chronic addiction to the Thatcher way of running British capitalism. Labour's policy review may be the beginning of Kinnock's last stand, a desperate attempt to make the Labour Party resemble the Tories so closely that the voting public won't know which one to vote for — or won't care — and so may end up. in their utter confusion, by electing another Labour government. According to another aspirant leader, Bryan Gould, the policy review ". . . will, we hope show that Labour is ready to take up the reins of government in the 1990's”. But if the review doesn't have that effect, if it fails to attract the votes so that Labour suffers yet another emphatic electoral defeat, Kinnock may be forced to disappear from the scene, to swap reminiscences with Michael Foot.

The reason is that the Labour Party is dedicated to winning political power over British capitalism. This is not so trite and obvious a statement as it may seem, for there are plenty of Labour supporters who are sustained by the delusion that their party is still based on the principles of socialism, that it aims to bring about a fundamental change in social relationships and will continue to advocate that change whether it is popular or not. The truth is that Labour will promise almost any reform, almost any policy, which will attract votes. It will try to exploit any issue when it thinks that this will gain it some support and it will shy away from any issue which is likely to lose it votes. If necessary it will perform the sort of policy U-turn to impress Ted Heath (for example Bryan Gould writes: “We are clear that the market and the private sector have an enormously important and valuable role to play in any modern industrial society . . .").

That is why Labour is going through yet another policy re-appraisal and why the party leadership begins to look like a steeplechase when the horses are coming to the last fence and the run in to the winning post.

Prescott's luck

And that brings us back to John Prescott and his job as transport spokesman. When he was reshuffled the media were still juggling with the most recent exposure, by the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise and the fire at Kings Cross, of the fact that capitalism's priority has to be profit before safety. This is perfectly apparent to anyone with any insight into what happens in the world, and why it happens, but insight and clarity are things which the media are not noted for.

Since then a series of outrages, misnamed accidents, have provided Prescott with one opportunity after another to boost his public image. At one stage it seemed as if no day was complete unless it included Prescott on our TV screen, snarling and snapping and posing as the outraged guardian of the travelling public. Slack security, after the Lockerbie crash, was exposed by a series of journalists and other pranksters wangling their way on to aircraft. Botched production standards and inadequate maintenance caused the Boeing 737 to come down on the M1. The Clapham rail crash came about because electricians were being overworked to the point of exhaustion The only way we could put all this to rights was . . . to get bulldoggish Mr Prescott in charge at the Ministry of Transport, or better still at Number Ten.

Channon's pure genius

A rather different person is the target of many of Prescott’s barbs. Paul Channon is an extremely wealthy member of the Guinness family. He sits for the Southend constituency which is regarded as more or less the electoral property of his family; it was previously held by his father who was one of capitalism's mega-parasites and who didn't seem to care who knew it. Channon cannot match Prescott for being bulldoggish: he looks more like a mournful turtle with a complexion which often signals an over-indulgence in the beverage on which the family fortunes are based. Or perhaps he spends too much time in the sun; he owns a place in the West Indian paradise island of Mustique. where only the super-rich can afford to enjoy the silver sands, the turquoise sea and the temperature held steady in the eighties.

It was to Mustique that Channon sped, just after the Lockerbie crash, excusing himself by saying that he wanted to spend Christmas with his family like everyone else — which did not. of course, include the people killed in the crash and their families. Since then the Guardian has revealed his contemptuous treatment of a couple whose son was killed at Lockerbie, an incident which hints that Channon has a view of society which, as a Tory politician, he would do better not to make so obvious.

Channon’s wealth originates from the labour of the workers employed by the Guinness company. It comes from their unpaid labour time, from the wealth they produce which is surplus to what they receive for the sale of their ability to work. This is called (although so unpleasant a word probably never sullies the lips of a member of the Guinness clan) exploitation. The exploited people in society — the working class — are the majority: they are the non-parasites, the useful, productive people. Yet they do not have, nor are they expected to desire, any real say in how society is run, in how significant decisions are taken. It is assumed that they will accept their lot — their poverty, repression, their needlessly truncated lives — without complaint or question. If they should die in one of capitalism's "accidents”, in a capsized ferry or a train trapped by a faulty signal — why. they are sacrifices to the god of profit and that, after all the hypocrisy about their deaths, should be satisfaction enough for them.

If that is degrading — well, so is this social system. Capitalism is kept going by working class sacrifice. It churns out the wealth of people like Channon and it boosts the ambitions of those like Prescott. Perhaps sacrifice is the wrong word; perhaps suicide would be better.

Ivan.