All fools now? (2025)

From the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who now echoes the thoughts of the poet Robert Browning and his longing to be back home; ‘Oh, to be in England. Now that April’s there’? Many of us would probably far rather be somewhere else.

April 1st is April Fools’ Day, where it is traditional to tease someone in a practical joke in which the victim is humiliated by being call an April Fool. Custom says this may only happen up until midday. Schooldays on this date used to be fraught with the fear of falling victim to the perpetrators of such japes.

April is also when, in the UK, the new financial/tax year begins. Browning wouldn’t have been so gung-ho had he faced the rises in the cost of living that occur in this month. Expect increases in the cost of council tax, water rates, mobile phone bills, internet providers, car tax, insurance, travel fares, petrol, diesel, rent, mortgage payments and more.

For those on fixed incomes and benefits any small increase given through the beneficence of the state is quickly swallowed up leaving them no better off, or possibly worse off. A 2022 political campaign called Enough is Enough, led by the unions, demanded ‘A real pay rise, a cut in energy bills, an end to food poverty, ‘decent’ homes for all, higher tax for the wealthy, nationalisation of certain industries’. Even in the unlikely event of them being implemented, these Fabianesque aspirations would do nothing to change the underlying cause of the problems they aimed to resolve – capitalism.

Poet Adrian Henri once wrote a poem for Roger McGough asking, did a nun think, when standing at the checkout having shopped for one, what it was like to buy groceries for two? Most folk waiting in a checkout queue are probably thinking, ”kin ‘ell, how much is all this going to cost?’ along with … ‘why don’t they open more checkouts, this queue is ridiculous.’

Socialists in a payment queue might think that too, but they might also think ‘why aren’t the working class working toward socialism? Because then there would be no queuing up to pay because in socialism there would be no money and there would free access to goods.’ Along with, ‘don’t these people know that in socialism they wouldn’t be wasting their time and their lives adding to a capitalist’s profits?’ These sentiments apply to any situation where payment is required before the commodities being purchased are allowed to be removed from the shop or store in the hands of the new possessor.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has a report, published at the end of January, the first one it has issued under the new Labour government. It is using figures for 2022/2023 but says that the statistics still remain relevant. According to these figures, one in five people in the UK experience poverty, including over four million children and almost two million pensioners.

The JRF says that there has not been a measurable drop in poverty levels in twenty years. The quoted statistics are deeply disturbing, or should be in an economy the size of the UK’s – in 2022/2023 six million people were in deep poverty. ‘Destitution, where people cannot afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed’ affected almost four million people, including children. The ‘solutions’ which the JRF proposes amount to nothing but a sticking plaster on an open wound.

In the 1953 film Trouble in Store, Norman Wisdom sang, ‘Don’t laugh at me ’cause I’m a fool, I know it’s true, yes I’m a fool.’ Socialists get called many names when they present the case for socialism, especially when those hearing it for the first time find it difficult to grasp. Statistically, a socialist has to have been called a fool at one time or another.

For some, the clarity of the socialist analysis is so obvious and easy to understand that the first reaction can be as if someone switched on a blinding light in a dark room, and the second reaction is an urge to share it.

We’ve all done foolish things in our lives that we subsequently regret but, to use a fairy story example, once a bite of the apple has been taken it is impossible to ignore or forget the knowledge which has been gained. As of now we are, all of us, fools for continuing to let capitalism, its elites, and its shills, carry on exploiting resources, the planet and us, the majority who run capitalism on behalf of the minority.

Dave Coggan