The real Michael Foot (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Could it be that in Michael Foot the Labour Party have elected someone who will never rise any higher than Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition? As Foot fumbles on, questions are beginning to be asked about him, and hopeful contenders for his job are making careful speeches. One version of Foot is the sick, half blind, scabrous, dishevelled bookworm, accident-prone in more senses than one — the sort of person who would wear a donkey jacket at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. Another is the former left wing firebrand who has come to betray his principles and his friends and now hunts the Militants out of his party like mediaeval witches. Another, more despairing, is that he is a tousled intellectual, so unsuited to the political rough and tumble that he is quite unable to put the Tories, three million unemployed, Norman Tebbit and all, out of their misery.

Foot comes from a a well-heeled family with famously liberal traditions. Until he was upstaged by his tempestuous nephew Paul he was the wayward son, the brainy darling of the Labour Party rank and file who was greeted at the conference rostrum with rapturous applause before he had so much as uttered a single word. Of course he went to Oxford and of course he occupied there that position, so coveted by all aspiring politicians among the dreaming spires, of President of the Union.

Of course he was involved with Tribune and with the old TUC/Labour Party newspaper the Daily Herald. His brilliance so impressed the crusty imperialist Lord Beaverbrook that, in spite of his reputation, Foot was given the job of editing Beaverbrook’s paper the Evening Standard. Just after Dunkirk Foot, with Peter Howard (who later joined Moral Rearmament) and Frank Owen (who later joined the Liberal Party) wrote the book Guilty Men. This cleverly caught the mood of the time; it argued that many of the problems in pre-war Britain, and the war itself, were the responsibility of a bunch of complacent, arrogant Conservative politicians. Guilty Men, with other similar books published by Victor Gollancz, quickly became fashionable reading among people who were looking for an explanation — or more accurately a scapegoat — for the dreadful things that had happened since 1918.

In the 1945 election, Foot was a notable boulder in the landslide to Labour, capturing Plymouth Devonport which had been the seat of Lady Astor. This was indeed a symbolic victory — the dazzling young intellectual sitting where once sat a Tory who personified much about pre-war Britain that had become despised — and had been denounced in Guilty Men. Foot had no intention of allowing the glamour of his victory grow dim. He quickly busied himself in the appropriate causes, in particular the Keep Left Group, whose manifesto attacked the basis of the Attlee government’s foreign policy, which was the alliance with America and the cold war antagonism towards Russia.

To a government which was fighting the cause of British capitalism on several fronts at once. Foot was something of a nuisance and there was small prospect then of him ever joining the Front Bench. He came to represent much of the frustrations of Labour supporters who wondered why their government was failing so signally to introduce the Promised Land into Britain; he was the evidence that cleverer, more sincere, more radical ministers would do a more effective job of transforming society. The working class in Devonport did not see it quite like that however; in the 1955 election Foot lost his seat and remained out of Parliament until 1960, when Aneurin Bevan's death left a vacancy at the mining seat of Ebbw Vale. Foot was Bevan’s worshipping biographer; he seemed the obvious choice as Labour candidate which, in a place like Ebbw Vale where Tories were as rare as fumbling fly-halves, was tantamount to being the MP.

No eyebrows were raised when he was passed over by Wilson during the 1964/70 governments but when Labour came back to power in February 1974 Foot was given charge of the Department of Employment. His first brief was to settle the miners’ strike. In her diaries. Barbara Castle describes this as a brilliant appointment; Foot would use his standing among the miners to get them back to work and Wilson would defuse a potential critic. Foot's start was not all that promising because when he went to get his seal of office and to kiss the queen he was dressed as if he had been camping. But the queen need not have worried; her new Minister of Employment soon showed that it is not necessary to wear formal clothes in order to protect the interests of the class she represents.

Labour’s programme in the first 1974 election was very embarrassing because it talked about “socialist aims” and declared an intention to “. . . eliminate poverty wherever it exists in Britain . . .” Just in case they did not manage to get rid of all poverty, the Labour programme had as a fail-safe a rather less ambitious aim, which was to “. . . achieve far greater economic equality in income, wealth and living standards . . . bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families . . .” Denis Healey, their Chancellor of the Exchequer, showed that he meant business, and that he was not to be easily embarrassed by little considerations like election promises, by threatening to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked. What with all that, and with the tearaway lefty Foot at the Department of Employment, workers who thought that any shift in the balance of wealth might begin with a rise in their wages could well have concluded that their day had come.

Illustration by George Meddemmen

But the first message of that government was that there must be some delay. World capitalism was fast sliding into recession and the Labour government’s response, to which they were by then well conditioned, was an assault on working class living standards. The conflict was sharpened by the fact that after Labour had abolished the statutory wage restraint of the Heath government there was a flood of wage claims. It was then that Foot showed the true mettle of a left winger in power; with some gusto he bent to the task of holding back the flood. The coal strike settled, he quickly decided that further miners' wage claims were “excessive", although by what standards he did not make clear. In January 1975 he told the TUC that there should be no argument about the official “guidelines” on pay (the Labour government's new name for wage restraint) but that they should ". . . merely apply them as they stand". Barbara Castle thought that “He is taking his role as guardian of the Pay Code so seriously that he is becoming more rigid than Jim Callaghan was in his Chancellor days” (she was commenting about an argument over a rise for the nurses) and she later explained “Mike is obsessed with the need to win the next election”.

The record of that government, whose return was Foot's obsession, is set down now in a disreputable history. They quickly abandoned the professed aims of their manifesto and concentrated on organising a more efficient and intense exploitation of the working class — or of those of them that remained in employment as the dole queues grew longer. Public expenditure, which many Labour supporters saw as the key to any change in the balance of wealth, was cut in absolute and relative terms and Chancellor Healey, trying to hold wage rises below those in prices, turned his attention to squeezing the poor. There were some bitterly contested strikes, in which Prime Minister Callaghan encouraged workers to break through picket lines and urged the police to immediately arrest any picket they thought was making threats against blacklegs. Meanwhile, the pips of the rich remained conspicuously unsqueezed; the signs were that their share of national wealth, which had actually fallen under the Heath government, increased under Labour.

Disgruntled Labour supporters now describe those years as a time of mistakes and missed opportunities. They assert nostalgically that the aims of the 1974 manifesto are still relevant, which is another way of saying that the problems Labour claimed to be able to deal with then are still here today — that, in other words, the manifesto was worthless.

Any sense of betrayal in their ranks, as Labour recovered from the shock of their defeat in 1979, can only have helped Foot beat Healey for the leadership in 1980. In spite of the responsibility he bore, Foot seemed to be considered somehow blameless while Healey acquired the reputation of a beetle-browed political thug. Since then Foot has continued to play the double game. The conference rhetoric is as readily available as ever, to excite the delegates who have come all that way to the seaside to be cheered up: “I am a peacemonger!” Foot raved to thunderous applause at Brighton last year. “An inveterate, incurable peacemonger." The value of those rousing words could be assessed a few months later, as the Task Force was being prepared for the assault on the Falklands: “I believe the government is right. . . I support the despatch of the Task Force” were the words with which Foot urged the government on to quicker and more brutal bellicosity.

The man who once marched in support of CND’s demand for immediate unilateral nuclear disarmament now craftily fudges the issue: “I agree with the programme . . . for trying to get a non-nuclear defence programme for this country as speedily as we possibly can. . . (Weekend World, 3 October 1982). “The greatest task which this Labour Party will have to take is . . . securing nuclear disarmament in this country and throughout the world" (Labour Conference, 28 September 1982). In more direct words. Foot was saying that he favours nuclear disarmament eventually. when all the other nuclear powers have also disarmed — the sort of noncommittal policy to attract Tories, Liberals. SDP members and all floating voters everywhere.

These developments are not accidental; they are exactly consistent with Foot's record in government and out of it. Neither is he himself exceptional; he is only the latest example of the processes of capitalist leadership, which passes through stages of extravaganza, reality and disintegration. This unavoidable process reflects the fact that capitalism's problems — like poverty which Labour promises to abolish, like weapons of war which Foot once wished to abolish — do not respond to the dramatic speeches of political leaders. Foot is typical in that his followers invest him with a power which he does not have, nor can have; their political ignorance and his impotence are components in the basic fallacy of the entire principle of leadership and the theory that leaders are indispensable.

So will the real Michael Foot stand up? To show us that, after all the learning, the speeches and the writing he has at last come into his own? And then would some of his followers also stand up. to show that they understand that it is all a noxious mockery of their human interests.

Ivan

Who cares for the nurses? (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is important that nurses, in contemplating strike action, are rejecting their image as self-sacrificing and dedicated professionals. By acting in a militant and self-interested way they are questioning an oppressive ideology long associated with this form of employment.

There are all sorts of moral values attached to nursing. You just have to look at the words which the public, the unions, the media and nurses and patients themselves, use about the job. Nurses are expected to have a sense of “vocation", to function in a dedicated, committed and devoted way. These characteristics are to some extent hang-overs from the historical association with certain religious orders which have traditionally cared for the sick and needy; the terminology in nursing with "sisters" and “matrons” (mothers) — confirms this. But if you think about what these words really mean, then you have the problem in a nutshell. A nurse's sense of vocation is supposed to suggest a “calling”, in a literal sense by a god or some other external power. To be “committed” and “dedicated" to that sense of vocation means to “give oneself over” to it, to lose a sense of self in pursuit of an activity or purpose outside of oneself. In other words, to be self-sacrificing rather than —self interested.

Why is it that nurses are questioning the notion that they should be selflessly committed, and are beginning to act in a self-interested, class-interested way? The most clear cut reason arises directly out of their actual day to day experiences at work: contradictions between what they expect and what happens.

What are nurses' expectations? Most people who enter training do so out of a genuine desire to help people. The sick need to be looked after. Most reasons given by nurses for their choice of job are associated with helping people and the social usefulness of the work (Maguire: The Role of the Nurse, RCN Research Project, 1966). Yet in practice nurses are frustrated at every turn by their inability to do precisely that. There is a stark contradiction between the real desire to care for and give to other people and the economic realities of working in any capitalist health organisation. The NHS is a low class service oriented basically towards servicing the sick and making them socially and economically useful once again (in much the same way that the parts of a vehicle need to be serviced every so often); it exists to patch up workers and send them home — and back to work — as quickly as possible.

The allocation of finance and skills within the NHS is on the basis of cost-effectiveness. Well-equipped geriatric care units are of a much lower priority than surgical units. The economic return on removing an infected appendix from an otherwise fit young male is higher in this society than is the allocation of resources to the terminally ill. The young male will be fit for the labour market after his treatment. whereas the old person is no longer economically useful to capitalism: literally, he or she can be considered fit for nothing.

This “needs allocation” decision-making process is actually mirrored in the nurse's daily routine. Given an environment constantly lacking adequate resources (of people and equipment), simply because these are not allocated on the basis of human need, the nurse must decide which needs can be satisfied. And there is very little choice in what is a priority. The needs of those who are likely to go on living take precedence over the needs of those who are almost certain to die. A nurse will cause trouble on a short-staffed ward by insisting on sitting with and comforting an old person who is dying, rather than giving out drugs, helping to feed or wash patients, or anything else which in a simplistic way will — like a certain orange, fizzy glucose drink — “aid recovery”. The nurse, like the administrators, makes decisions according to social and economic norms associated with the rationale on which the NHS is based — on what is most "profitable". It is profitable to service fit young people; it is not profitable to spend time or money on the dying.

Perhaps the most explicit contradiction which the nurse experiences is that between the theory of nursing practice and the practice itself. This must create unpleasant tensions. The main contradiction is between more or less intelligent and scientific approaches to caring for sick people, which are learned during training, and the fact that these cannot be put into practice. For example, the nurse is taught to have a view of the patient as a “whole person”; to “empathise”, and respond to perceived physical and psychological needs. If in practice the nurse can only act as an automaton, a dose of Lucozade, and respond only to selected physical needs, a tension is felt. It is a commonly held view among nurses that what they are taught is irrelevant to how they must perform as practitioners. It is naively idealistic to believe that nurses can care for the “whole person”, or meet such varied needs, in a working environment where those needs must be systematically ignored. Rather than begin to believe that the training is impracticable or faulty, nurses have to resolve the tension by realising that it is the economic structure of society, and the consequent nature of the health service itself, which creates the problems. Neither a genuine desire to help people nor to care for them in the most effective way possible, can be satisfied in a health care system organised to “cure” the largest number for the lowest cost. In such a system the weakest go to the wall. When a nurse has to decide who to neglect, day in and day out, the idea of being able to “empathise” becomes a sick joke. The tensions are endless.

Another singular aspect of nursing as employment is the rigidity of its hierarchy. To experience the authority structure in a hospital is to learn to tread carefully — an unpleasant mixture of walking a tightrope and a cat on hot bricks. Not only is there the medical contingent “above” the nurse, but there is also the army of ancillary workers to whom the nurse is “superior”. On one level the experience of the different status of co-workers seems bewildering and intimidating; on a more complex level it engenders another contradiction.

Nursing is an unusually “co-operative” activity. Anyone who has been in hospital may have witnessed the enthusiasm created by a group of nurses trying to do their work, often under pressure, in the most effective way possible: they have a common and human aim to do as much as they can for their patients, and often it is up to them to organise this as best they can. One quality of a “good” nurse is “team spirit”, an ability to co-operate and co-ordinate effectively with others. This is only one side of it however. This cooperative situation only exists when nurses actually perceive that they have an aim in common — a goal to work towards together. As soon as nurses enter into a game of one-upmanship this is no longer the case: and unfortunately, one-upmanship is often the game to be played.

Trainee nurses are in competition with one another, as well as having the cooperative aim of getting the work done. Each one will be graded by the nurse in charge of the ward, and each one will attempt to be evaluated more highly than fellow workers. Similarly for qualified staff: they constantly seek promotion to higher grades, and must therefore win the approval of the hierarchy. This competitive behaviour conflicts with the cooperative endeavour. On a practical level this means that the nurse you were working with in a fulfilling, friendly, useful way five minutes ago, has suddenly gone sneaking off into the office to report something to the sister which you just noticed — so scoring your point.

Why is it that the types of working relationships created in nursing have to turn peoples’ illnesses and lives into a matter of scoring points? This is a question which most nurses must sense. Mow they answer it is of vital concern. They have to see the tension between the competitive and cooperative nature of their work as a product of the entire power structure within their profession. They are induced to compete because a hierarchical structure requires competition for positions of status. And more than this, it is vital also to recognise it as a mirror of the way in which workers compete with one another, to score a few points in the status stakes, rather than cooperating in their interests as a class.

There is another important factor which encourages nurses to question traditional expectations and, alongside, the values and ethics of a society which creates their oppressive and perverted role. In hospitals there is a clear-cut sexual division of labour according to status. Ninety per cent of nurses are female; 80 per cent of doctors are male. As one ascends the nursing hierarchy, the proportion of males increases, while in the medical profession women are decreasingly represented in the higher ranks. The difference in the representation of men and women in medical and paramedical jobs occurs largely in terms of gender expectations.

Doyal and Pennell, in their book The Political Economy of Health, give an historical analysis of the development of this situation. They quote Eckstein:

. . . the Nightingale nurse was simply the ideal Lady, transplanted from home to the hospital . . . to the doctor, she brought the wifely virtue of absolute obedience. To the patient she brought the selfless devotion of a mother. To the lower level hospital employees, she brought the firm but kindly discipline of a household manager accustomed to dealing with servants. . .

In their own analysis, they go on to say:

A basic division was therefore created between what were regarded as the hard-headed, diagnostic attitudes of medicine, the "curing" that male doctors did, and the “caring" which was to be done by women. . . 

In other words, to be a nurse is to be the stereotypical woman: selfless, devoted, committed and unassertive. In fact this is becoming less and less the case. Changing social attitudes to masculinity and femininity have enabled nurses to he more critical of tradition — and this has encouraged their greater militancy in the traditionally male arena of trade union action. To be involved in action for better pay and conditions means leaving selflessness and unassertiveness behind: means abandoning, to some extent, passive femininity and recognising a class interest. This is a vital step in the development of women's consciousness. Unless women reject traditional femininity, they will not develop a critical attitude toward society. Nursing creates many contradictions, which can be resolved in a class conscious way.

But we start with indignation. Nurses are rightly indignant about their position. They are sick of working for a pittance. Anyone can see that for a nurse, trying to get everything done is like trying to bail out a leaking boat with a sieve. It is time for nurses to express this real indignation — and not just about being paid “too little". It is time to get up and say “Look, I'm sick of being put upon, of being paid a pittance to watch people suffer needlessly. There comes a time when I just have to express my own needs — there’s just too many demands being made on me. I am being exploited in every sense of the word — as a worker selling myself for a salary as well as a person wanting to help other people".

Within capitalism, genuine caring cannot flourish. For nurses and other workers, self and mutual interest only begin with fighting for better pay; beyond this is a necessary political struggle to create a society in which the desire to be co-operative and caring people can be realised.

Chira Lovat