Dynamite. (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jeering at the claims of the Tariff Reformer as the possessor of a nostrum that will alleviate poverty, Burns, at Tynemouth, 14.10,08 (Daily News report) said “I am not a prophet, but I suggest this : If Protection were in existence, it would never see one hard summer because the people would perish.” So. The people who under Free Trade have so great an advantage over the miserable wretches who are forced to exist under Protection, are so strong, so virile, so well nourished after their generations of prosperity, that they would perish in one summer of Protection that the miserable weaklings of Protection manage, somehow, to pull through years of. No, we should not describe Burns as a prophet. A much shorter word will suffice. He doesn’t seem to have sense enough to know when he is giving the game away. Verily, if his salary is to be preserved to him the Lord must make quick and violent incision in him, for he is indeed raw.

* * *

“In Newcastle Mr. Hudson (Labour) was hand in glove with the Liberal candidate at the last (general) election. He was entertained at the Liberal Club less than 36 hours before the election, and he urged his supporters to split their votes between the Liberal and himself, which was very loyally done.” 

Sunday Chronicle, 13.9.08.

* * *

“Mr. Hudson says that he is not going to take a hand in the contest and his attitude is the outcome of his loyalty to the Labour Party. Newcastle is a strong one-man seat for Labour. Two Labour candidates mean that both would be defeated at the next general election.” 

Sunday Chronicle, 20.9.08.

* * *

“The Independent Parliamentary Labour Party which boasts of its independence of either of the old political parties, has refrained from putting up a candidate at Newcastle because Mr. Hudson, the “Labour” member for the double-seated constituency, believes he cannot be independent of the Liberal vote at the next election ; or, at any rate, the leaders of his party believe that . . . Conservatives can afford to smile at the sight of Labour kow-towing to the Liberals who make helots of some state servants.” — Evening Chronicle, 18.9.08.

* * *

“Forty-six deaths from starvation in the county of London for 1907.” 

Home Office White Paper.

* * *

The Registrar General’s analysis of the 1901 census recently published shows that general labourers in industrial centres have an average mortality more than twice as high as the average for all workers, while the mortality among clergymen is less than half the average.

* * *

“The time is fast approaching when the real struggle will be between the man who wields hammer and chisel and the man who holds the cash-box—Capital versus Labour, if you like. Whig and Tory must give place to these.” 

The Business Man’s Magazine.

Whig and Tory know this already. The Business Man’s Magazine’s writer’s point is merely that Whig and Tory will soon be forced to drop the present pretence of political partizanship in the general interest and come out in what the draper would call “fast colours.”

* * *

Since the law came into operation that closed public houses in Scotland all day on Sunday and early on Saturday, the proportion of charges of drunkenness and disorderliness per 1,000 of the population of Glasgow has increased from 17.7 in 1904 to 27.7 in 1907 according to the official figures supplied by the Chief Constable of Glasgow. In 1904 there were 13,850 charges; 1905, 15,263 charges ; 1906, 20,458 charges ; and in 1907, 22,314. This is how the facts support the argument of the temperance crank that the absense of facilities for drinking prevents drinking being indulged in.

* * *

From 1896 to 1905 the total deaths from all classes of accidents in connection with mines in the United Kingdom was 10,202. (Blue Book.)

* * *

The latest report of the General Board of Commissioners states that since 1858 lunacy in Scotland has increased by 202 per cent. as against a population increase of 58 per cent. On the 1st January last the total number of insane person in Scotland was 17,908.

* * *

“According to the Board of Trade ‘Labour Gazette,’ returns from 268 trade unions, having a net membership of 648,585, showed 8.9 per cent. of the net membership as unemployed. According to the report of the New York State Labor Department, out of a total of 387,450 trade unionists reported on, 138,131, or 35.7 per cent., were unemployed on 31 March. The New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph stated, on 27 April, on the authority of Mr. Herman Robinson, general organiser of the American Federation of Labor, that at least 40 per cent. of the trade unionists of the city of New York were unemployed on 1 April.” 

Morning Leader, 5.10.08.

Cuttings and critiques. (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Mr. Ritzema, J.P., of Blackburn, recently delivered himself of a scheme to “Nationalise and suppress the Liquor Traffic.” So impressed is he with his scheme that he has had it printed, and the Socialist Standard has received a copy. Let me say at once that I also am impressed by the scheme—in spite of the fact that it was first launched upon a long-suffering public from Paradise Church, Blackburn.

#    #    #    #

The background having been laid on with the brush of a Stiggins, incorporating the usual denunciations of drink as a greater curse than war, pestilence and famine, the cause of 80% of crime. 50% of lunacy, pauperism, etc, Mr. Ritzema talks of buying out the brewers at about 300 millions, imposing a tax of 20s. in the £ upon all intoxicants, selling them at cost to the town and county councils—who will provide public-houses and managers out of their own funds, 9-l0ths of the cost of which, and the loss on the sale of liquor, the Government would refund. Of the profits stockholders would receive 4%, and 2% would be set aside to redeem the capital. This would leave large sums for social work, such as “finding immediate work for the unemployed,” the drink traffic would be gradually extinguished under the benign influences at work, the money diverted from beer would buy the workers bread and boots, trade would be stimulated, lunacy, crime, and pauperism almost obliterated, the churches saved, and a sober, educated, and intelligent democracy would be evolved.

#    #    #    #

A beautiful scheme, savouring of the scheme for old age pensions to commence 20 or 30 years after the potential pensioner is a box of cold meat. The poverty of the proletarian is due to his exploitation at the source of production, and from that exploitation all things flow. The investigations of Chas. Booth, the Tory, show 75% of drunkenness to be due to poverty and its inseparable conditions. It is the degradation wrought by poverty that expresses itself in alcoholic excess, and the righteous Ritzema, living under the normal conditions of the lower paid worker, might find the atmosphere of Paradise Church less congenial than the mild excitement of the “Pig and Whistle.”

#    #    #    #

These morality-mongers prefer to potter with effects; yet this question must strike the stupidest in the face, if drunkenness exists why is it? What answer has the blue-ribboned army to that? It is, they say, when they are not dumb, due to the opportunities that exist for drinking. Oh, blind and sons of the blind! Abolish drink tomorrow—what then ? Happiness, they say, prosperity, joy in living. Yet the most abstemious, thrifty, careful living people in the world are the most poverty-stricken—the people of India.

#    #    #    #

No ! it won’t do. If the conditions of existence drive people into deplorable excess, that excess, that craving for excitement, for some break in the hideous monotony of their existence, must manifest itself somehow. Close all the public-houses—have you then exhausted all the media through which the craving will express itself ? No !

#    #    #    #

I wish I had space to deal with Mr. Ritzema’s little scheme. It would be interesting to try and discover how his blue horror fades to a lighter blue when it is dispensed by town council managers rather than rubicund Boniface, and how the craving for drink is to languish and die out when the liquor is served in pewters engraved with the council’s arms, and how the deep damnation of the whole business is reconciled with the payment of the authors of it (the brewers) and its continued existence under the management of a government that regards it as an. unspeakably reprehensible thing, more accursed than war, plague, or pestilence.

#    #    #    #

At the recent bye-election for Montrose Burghs a Mr. Joseph Burgess sought election, claiming to stand for Independent Labour and Socialism. In the first paragraph of his address he said, “If I have the honour to secure your suffrages I shall consider it my first duty, as the representative of all classes and industries, to do all that lies within the power of a Parliamentary representative to advance the general interests of all the Burghs and their citizens.”

#    #    #    #

By “all classes” Mr. Burgess really meant all sections of the only two classes there are—the master class and the working class. He was therefore admittedly prepared to go to the Commons to represent the master class—the landlords, employers, financiers, lawyers, the officials of the army and the civil forces!

#    #    #    #

In his next paragraph he said, “all textile trade questions would find in me a zealous and intelligent Parliamentary advocate,” and in the following, “I believe I could be helpful to all who are therein concerned, whether they be employers or operatives.” So here you have an “Independent Labour Socialist” candidate endeavouring to convince the employing class that he could be of great assistance to them. Apparently Mr. Burgess is far from accepting the impossibility of serving two masters faithfully. How he can serve the interests of the masters without opposing or neglecting the necessarily conflicting interests of the workers Mr. Burgess does not say.

#    #    #    #

Mr. Burgess would, further, nationalise all forms of industrial capital, evidently thinking it better for the workers to be exploited by Government departments than by individual capitalists or joint-stock companies. It is the same to us whether we are robbed by the Post Office, or the L.C.C. Tramway Department, or by Sir Clifton Robinson, or the National Telephone Co. It is a matter of complete indifference to us that the distraint for rent is levied in the name of some local teetotaller or Bible basher, or the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or a Government Land Department. Capital is wealth used for the exploitation of labour. We do not wish to nationalise that exploitation, but to abolish it.

#    #    #    #

Mr. J. W. Benson is the Parliamentary candidate for Pudsey Division, “at the unanimous invitation of the branches of the Pudsey Division I.L.P.” He claims that he is “an earnest student of the cause of poverty” and “convinced that Socialism is the only real and permanent remedy”; that “bad trade, unemployment, and poverty at present exist under a Free Trade policy, and therefore Free Trade is no remedy for these evils.” After this avowal one would expect (not knowing these I.L.P. chaps) that Mr. Benson would point out that Socialists took no part in the fiscal controvacy, being concerned only with the abolition of poverty, through Socialism, “the only real and permanent remedy.” Not so Mr. Benson. “I am in favour,” he says, “of the continuation of Free Trade.” So there you are. The evils of bad trade, unemployment and poverty exist under Free Trade, therefore let us have some more Free Trade. Let us hoodwink the workers into believing that it matters to them whether they are robbed by Protectionist crows or Free Trade kites. Such is I.L.P’ism.

#    #    #    #

In this respect, however, the I.L.P’s vis-a-vis, the Social-Democratic Party, has nothing to shout about. In a pamphlet written by its secretary on “Social-Democracy and the Zollverein” it pointed out that the great danger was that the working class might be induced to take sides. Agreed. And yet every S.D.P. candidate, from H. M. Hyndman downwards, has endeavoured to induce them to take sides, by declaring for Free Trade as against Protection. Take its very latest wild-cat candidature, in North-West Manchester. On the front page Dan Irving declared for “no tariff barriers to make dearer the food of the people,” although in the body of his address he described the Tariff Reform agitation as “a sham, political warfare on the fiscal arrangements of the country,” after which he said, “as a Social-Democrat I am in favour of Free Trade.”

#    #    #    #

Dan’s address was funny in other respects. “Whatever party may be in power,” he said, “I shall always be found giving my support to any measure which makes for the benefit of the people,” and then, in his concluding paragraph, “Workers, remember that in all times of industrial struggle” (which, of course, means every minute of day) “the members of the master class use the power you give them in Parliament and on public authorities to compel you to submit to their will.” And it is suggested by this “worker for the Labour Movement for twenty-four years” that the master class, possessing and using the power of compelling the workers to submit to their will, will introduce measures which make “for the benefit of the people”! Really, these fellows must be abysmal idiots or—— (missing word. Suggestions invited.)

#    #    #    #

“Do not the working class pay the rates and taxes ?” is a question asked in the “Catechism of Socialism,” and Messrs. E. Belfort Bax and H. Quelch, both of the S.D.P., answer “No.” The worker, they add, has “nothing wherewith to pay taxes, and whether these be high or low, and whoever has to pay them directly, his position remains the same.” Generally speaking, they say further, the reduction of rates is of no benefit to the working class, and to devote the proceeds of municipal undertakings to the reduction of rates is simply to use them as means for making profit for the propertied class. After which Mr. Dan Irving, in his election address, “in the interests of Labour and Socialism,” declared for the “Nationalisation of Education and Poor Rates so that the financially strong may help to bear the burdens of the weak.” Very ‘OT—what ?

#    #    #    #

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Lorebrun, member of the Liberal Cabinet, said at a dinner at the Newcastle Gladstone Club on May 29th, that “The Conservatives represent the constant apprehension that change will do harm to vested interests. YOU WILL FIND, IF YOU LOOK BACK, THAT THERE HAS BEEN NO VESTED INTEREST INJURED BY ANY REFORMS THAT HAVE BEEN PASSED IN OUR DAY. You need never be afraid that things will go too fast in this country. In the last fifty years there has been an unparalleled advance in industrial progress and in the material domain of human effort, but nothing of the kind in the least degree corresponding has been done in regard to the improvement of the condition of the people.”

#    #    #    #

The Lord Chancellor has blown the gaff. No wonder that only one newspaper gave a full report of his speech. But what the frank Chancellor admits is undoubtedly true. No Socialist expects the master class to legislate against its own interests, and as we see, they do not so legislate. Hence the position of the S.P.G.B. Before the workers can get anything from the master class they must be able to take it. Therefore the work before us is to educate and organise the workers in these truths for the political supremacy of the workers. Then, and then only will the wealth producers find their burden lightened.

#    #    #    #

Mr. Ben Tillett, in an eulogy of the work of Tom Mann in Australia, writes, “the present leaders of the Labour Parties (of Australia) are blind to the revolutionary work going on apace and the trend of capitalism, falling back upon worn-out political shibboleths, fiscal fooling, sectarianism and religious intolerance and with the usual clap-trap of temperance opponents.” Well, Ben, what fooling, fiscal or other, beats your own fooling as emigration tout in England for the Australian Capitalist ? Was that fooling or something worse ?

#    #    #    #

The local Branch, S.D.P. indulges in Justice (6/6/08) in a great chuckle because they were able, by lying low and saying nothing, to secure that their nomination for the Leigh Union Board of Guardians should be the only one, so getting their man returned unopposed. They rejoice in beating Liberals and Tories at their own game, “and Lees is inside the board room, where we have not the least doubt that he will make his presence felt.” A victory for Socialism indeed—of the S.D.P. brand ! The educational effect on the workers locally must be stupendous !

Alegra.

A Look Round. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to “Bradstreet’s” there were 964 business failures in America in October, with assets 124 million dollars and liabilities 139 million dollars. In October, 1893, the failures were 1,753 with assets 36 million dollars and liabilities 55 million dollars. Thus in 1893 the average liabilities per failure were 31,375 dollars and in 1907 they were 144,200 dollars. But of the latter twenty failures account for 114 million dollars, leaving only 25 million dollars for the remaining 944.

* * *

The S.D.F., I.L.P., and the Labour Party were well represented in the signatures to the Memorial, relating to the employment of barmaids, submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last month. They included Miss Margaret Bondfield, Rev. R. J. Campbell, A. H. Gill, M.P., A. Henderson, M.P., J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., and D. J. Shackleton, M.P. The memorialists claim that from the advertisements in the trade papers it is evident that the great majority of barmaids are engaged on account of their attractiveness to men customers, whilst the record of the magistrates and other courts gives convincing statistical proof that the career of the disproportionate number of barmaids ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery and frequently suicide.

* * *

Now, if public houses are such demoralising and terrible places as these people would have us believe, why do not they take up a logical position and advocate their immediate suppression ? And why do they suggest that the wives and daughters of publicans should be permitted to continue to work in “surroundings which carry with them special dangers and temptations” ? Do they consider the publican has a right of private property in his wife and daughters so inviolable that he is to be permitted to employ them in a career that “ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” ?

* * *

But the memorialists would even permit barmaids now employed to continue in what they consider such vile surroundings provided they have a licence from the Government. They would “protect the young girls of the nation” but those who have already entered upon this horrible career are to be permitted to go down to their end “in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” if they have taken out a licence !

* * *

The Government is to place it on record that public houses are places where no decent woman should work. The publican’s wife and daughters are not to count. I suppose the worst surroundings are too good for them, according to the ideas of the memorialists. Licences are therefore to be granted to other men’s wives and daughters, and no doubt the fortunate holder of such a badge of slavery will be regarded as one who has either proved herself able to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, or is so low and depraved that it does not matter what happens to her.

* * *

No one denies that the barmaid’s lot could be improved, particularly in regard to her hours of labour, but in many respects it is vastly superior to that of other women workers. As a rule, she gets plenty of food and good food, which is more than can be said of the girls employed in such highly respectable occupations as millinery and dressmaking, often working for nothing and usually for only a few shillings a week. If they live at home the financial effort required for clothing prevents them from being otherwise than semi-starved all the time, and many of them exist in a condition of chronic anaemia which in due course has its effect upon their offspring. If they “live in”—well, Miss Bondfield, who wishes to abolish the barmaids, being an official of the Shop Assistants Union, has time after time denounced the system. And it is said that there are large establishments in the shopping centres of London where the girls who live in are allowed to stay out all night, provided they pay a fine of ten shillings in the morning. Such a system cannot be charged against the publicans. And as to the alleged immorality, it must be admitted that there is nothing drives women on the streets so much as inability to obtain food and clothing for themselves and their dependents. The barmaid, at any rate, is secured against this.

* * *

Again, the atmosphere of thousands of coffee shops is much more immoral than the bar of a public house is ever likely to be, and the girls employed have no protection. Customers may use vile language concerning the food (as it is called) supplied in these places, and this language the waitress has to listen to. A remonstrance on her part to her employer would probably result in her getting “the sack,” as the competition is too keen, and the profits too small, particularly in the poorer districts, for the “guvner” to be able to afford to quarrel with his customers. But if a customer in a wicked public house uses vile language to a barmaid and the manager or proprietor overhears or it is reported to him, the culprit is either warned, or put out and sometimes forbidden the house altogether. And the conditions of the girls in these coffee shops, as to hours, wages, and food, are certainly much inferior to those of the majority of barmaids.

* * *

Of course the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., through their members who signed the memorial, are being made the tools of the most bigoted section of that nonconformist conscience which they have so often denounced. These pharasaical humbugs really wish to prohibit the sale of alcoholic liquors, but lack the courage to openly declare themselves.

* * *

According to the Daily Chronicle’s Rome correspondent between 50,000 and 60,000 Neapolitans have formed a passive resistance movement, and for six months have refused to pay rent or quit their tenements. The Government are taking the usual course. Controlling, as they do, the armed forces of the nation, which armed forces they will continue to control so long as they are politically dominant, they are using those forces against the workers. In the early part of December ten thousand troops from various cities had been despatched to reinforce the Naples Garrison preparatory to evicting the working-class families concerned.

* * *

Once more “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes” has been demonstrated, this time by a Mr. Moreton Frewen. He says that the total accumulated capital in the country is estimated at £9,000,000,000, which invested at 3½ per cent. would bring in about 5d. a day per person. The total income from all sources Mr. Frewen estimates at £1,500,000,000 annually, equal to about 14s. per head per week. “Thus,” says our oracle, “the Socialist ideal of happiness would result in every individual in the country being possessed of a revenue of 16s. 11d. per week.” And Mr. Frewen adds that this would not be “a very prosperous state of affairs.”

* * *

16s. 11d. per head per week, says Mr. Frewen, will be the income under Socialism. It is computed that the average family consists of five persons, so that each family would receive £4 4s. 7d. per week. But it is known that the working class have larger families than the well-to-do section of the population, and the amount would therefore be increased for working-class families. And this “would not be a very prosperous state of affairs” !

* * *

Well, if Socialism really meant dividing up what is known as the National Income, it would mean the trebling, at least, of the income of the mass of the working class. Chas. Booth has shown that 1,250,000 of the population of London are in receipt of a wage of one guinea or less per week per family, and in commenting on the Railway dispute the Daily Telegraph pointed out that, in the event of a strike, an enormous number of men would be willing to blackleg at £1 per week. “Twenty shillings a week is no luxurious wage we admit,” said the Daily Telegraph, “but it is better, alas, than many thousands of workmen in both, town and country can secure.” So that the “prosperity” of the working class under capitalism is represented by one-sixth or less of what, according to Mr, Frewen, they would receive under Socialism, And this proves “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes ” !

* * *

It is not surprising that opponents get the idea that Socialism merely means the equalisation of income or wages when those professing: to be Socialists endeavour to popularise the same idea. Recently I heard a Mr. Dean, on the I.L.P. platform in East Ham, inform a questioner that “of course, it would be quite possible for anyone to save up his money under Socialism, if he preferred not to spend the wages paid to him each week by the State. But he would not be able to employ anyone else with the money so saved. He would be a capitalist, but unable to use his capital.” And after delivering himself of this he read the titles of pamphlets which he advised the audience to buy and study, some of which explained that the wages system would be abolished with the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of Socialism.

* * *

This misconception of Socialism arises largely out of the advocacy of palliatives by both the I.L.P. and the S.D.F. So obscured is the issue, even to members of these bodies, by their talk of the “right to work,” “better wages for the working class,” “free maintenance for children” etc., that they appear unable to conceive of any system where the hooter shall not sound the time for commencing and leaving work, and where the people shall not be the wage-receiving slaves of the machine industry that they are to-day. They would merely “humanise” the conditions of employment.

J. Kay

Drink and the child. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Board of Education have now made the teaching of teetotalism a normal part of the elementary school curriculum by the issuing of a comprehensive syllabus of lessons on the subject. Now if this were a disinterested endeavour to promote the well-being of the child it would be welcome, but, as in all capitalist “education,” the cloven hoof is visible. The chief object of this latest move is, as will be seen, not humanity, but more profit. Of course, from the professions of bourgeois spokesmen this fact could not be gathered. According to them the capitalist is in business solely for the benefit of the working class. He makes a profit only in order that the workers may get wages. He lives in debauchery and spends huge sums in luxury only to provide work for the lower orders. Indeed, his attitude is summed up in Marx’s ironical phrase, “the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.”

So, in the matter of education this humbug is perpetuated; and the insincerity of the master class is as plain in its temperance proposals as elsewhere. Drink is only a curse to-day because of the capitalist conditions which make for its excessive use and poisonous adulteration. But to remove the economic conditions which engender alcoholic abuse would be to strike a blow at capitalist interests. Instead, therefore, of abolishing the wretched conditions of proletarian life that lay at the root of much of the craving for drink, the capitalists hypocritically try to minimise effects by puritanical legislation, or they try to train the tender sapling during the brief school hours in the fond hope that industrial conditions in later life will not bend it in an opposite direction.

Many eminent men have placed on record the fact that bad air, bad food, monotony and overwork, are prominent among the influences that lead to excessive drinking. Prof. Konig expresses a common view of German physiologists when he says that:

“Taken in moderate quantities in such forms as cognac, brandy, beer, and other beverages, alcohol is likewise an important stimulant to digestion. Brandy, whiskey, sherry, and the like, are therefore favourite remedies in disturbances of the bowels and stomach, and this helps to explain why the poorer classes, who often live upon a wretched diet of the less digestible foods, such as coarse bread and potatoes, have a craving for strong and stimulating alcoholic drinks.”

In few questions, moreover, has the perversion of truth been more effectively organised than in that of the use of alcohol. The noisy and well organised teetotalers have for long, with damnable iteration, dinned exaggerated or lying statements into the public ear on this, matter, particularly in discussing its economic aspects. And now the education authority itself enters more thoroughly into its work of hypnotising the masses by means of early and persistent suggestion of the employer’s side of the case. From the standpoint of economics the teetotal twaddle admits of easy refutation; but even, from the physiological point of view, though, opinions differ among Socialists as to the benefits or otherwise to be derived from a moderate use of stimulants, it is well to remember that the evidence is by no means solely on the side of abstinence.

The Lancet manifesto in favour of the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, which was extensively signed by eminent medical men, will still be fresh in the mind of the reader. At the meeting. of the International Physiological Congress, held at Cambridge in September 1898, an attempt was made to obtain the opinion of leading physiologists regarding this particular subject, and the following statement drawn up by Sir Michael Foster, the president of the Congress, was presented for signature:

“The physiological effects of alcohol, taken in a diluted form, in small doses, as indicated by the popular phrase “moderate use of alcohol,” in spite of the continued study of past years, have not as yet been clearly and completely made out. Very much remains to be done, but, thus far, the results of careful experiments show that alcohol, so taken, is oxidised within the body, and so supplies energy like common articles of food, and that it is physiologically incorrect to designate it as a poison—that is, a substance which can only do harm and never good to the body. Briefly, none of the exact results hitherto gained can be appealed to as contradicting, from a purely physiological point of view, the conclusions which some persons have drawn from their daily common experience, that alcohol so used may be beneficial to their health.”

The occasion was particularly favourable, for some of the most celebrated physiologists of the world and many well-known investigators were present. A very few objected to the phraseology, and one, although believing it to be correct, refused to sign because he feared it might be misused by “the trade.” A large proportion of those to whom it was submitted expressed their approval by their signatures. And, says Mr. W. O. Atwater (Harper's, No. DCVI.) the number and character of the signers are such as warrant the acceptance of the statement as the opinion of the leading physiologists of the day.

But even if the excessive use of alcohol were to cease, and it were clearly proved that the sum of human happiness was increased by its moderate use, the capitalists’ objection would not cease. The real basis of their objection is that it is not a necessary but a luxury, and that if the worker could be got to do without it he could live more cheaply and work for less wages. Macaulay once said that the Puritans “hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” And the modern Puritan looks upon working-class pleasures in exactly the same spirit, particularly when they appear to stand in the way of bigger profits. This, indeed, underlies the whole of the Education syllabus as explained by the Daily News. Pleasure is a thing to which the workers have apparently no right. In choosing their food and drink they must allow no considerations of enjoyment to influence them. Thus the syllabus and notes are quoted by Cadbury’s organ as follow.

“Neither tea nor coffee is good for children ; they should have milk or cocoa instead. Cocoa is better for children than tea or coffee because it is less stimulating and contains a little more real food substance.

“It is true that there is a certain amount of nourishment in beer. There is, for example, a little sugar, and there is a small quantity of the food substance found in meat. To obtain enough food from beer really to benefit the body, however, it would be necessary to take an extremely large quantity. For this reason the good that might be done by the nourishing part of the beer would be more than counterbalanced by the harm done by the alcohol contained in so large a quantity.”

It will be seen that no weight is given to psychological considerations: the amount of nourishment is treated as the only factor, while beer is condemned, apparently, because it would be injurious to subsist solely upon it ! But it is also true that man cannot live by bread alone ; and when the percentages of protein and carbohydrates in an aliment have been found by analysis, the last word has by no means been said on its value. On some people, particularly those in depressing health or circumstances, the pleasure afforded by a small amount of alcoholic stimulant may have a beneficial effect—even from the dietetic point of view—far more important than the amount of actual nourishment imparted. No food-value has yet been ascribed to a hearty laugh, but there is much truth in the popular saying, “Laugh and grow fat.” Indeed, no discussion of the value of alcohol as an aliment can be adequate that does not take the psychological factor into account; and it is, moreover, doubtful, to say the least, if a merely attenuated existence is the life most worth living in any case.

Now, however, we come to what is after all the gist of the whole matter. It is that the capitalist has, rightly or wrongly, become convinced that the abstainer does more work, and the following striking statements are made by the Board of Education.

“Experiments were made by Dr. Parkes with two gangs of soldiers doing equally hard muscular work (mowing), one gang alternately taking beer during the work and the other not. In every case it was shown that although men taking beer might for a short time might gain on the others, yet they soon dropped behind, and at the end of the day the total work they had accomplished was less than that done by those who had no alcohol.

“Mr. Brassey (“Work and Wages”) says: ‘Some of the most powerful of the navvies have been teetotalers. On the Great Northern Railway there was a celebrated gang of navvies who did more work in a day than any other gang on the line, and always left off work an hour or an hour and a half earlier than any other men. Every navvy in this powerful gang was a teetotaler.'”

That is the point. The capitalist believes that the teetotaler can do more work for the same wages. He can live more cheaply, and so soon as abstinence is general, competition on the labour market will make him do more work for a lower wage, thus fitting, according to economic law, the price of his labour-power to his reduced average cost of subsistence. As though to emphasise the fact that it is the profitableness of the wage worker that is the chief care of the education authority, there follows the usual teetotal panegyric on thrift. It is worth quoting.

“The expenditure of £160,000,000, or more, on intoxicating liquors every year is a drain on the resources of the nation and the direct cause of not a little national poverty. It must be remembered how vastly large is this sum, which, it is estimated, is equal to all the rents of all the houses, farms, shops, hotels, etc., in the United Kingdom, so that the amount spent on drink alone would be enough to enable everybody to live rent free.”

The quotation has its amusing side, but how sad are the full facts from the workers’ point of view ? And what a condemnation of the present system it is that the thrift, sobriety and higher efficiency of the workers, while they swell the profits of the masters, simply intensify competition on the labour market, increase the toil of those in work, and augment the number of unemployed ! The net result of the labourer’s “virtue” while the labourer is a hireling under capitalism is a worsening of his economic condition. This side of the medal is not shown to the children. On the contrary, the impression is given to the worker’s child that he and not the employer will receive all the benefit of general thrift and abstemiousness, and that hunger will cease from troubling and the landlord lie at rest. Yet the facts, which the syllabus does not give, are that thrift, if general, means a reduction of the demand for goods, and is consequently a restriction of the market and of the employment for labour ; that increased efficiency on the part of the workers does not increase the demand for products but decreases the number of men the masters need employ to supply the market; and finally, that the less it costs the average worker to live, the lower will competition force down wages. But all this does not matter, for though the worker gets less wages and less employment, the capitalist will get more profit—and that is the real aim of State education to-day. Truly we have much to thank the ruling class for in these matters. The workers schooling is a training for wage-slavery ; no more, no less. The propertyless are taught to revere and defend the interests, the flag, and the Empire of their masters. The supreme aim of it all is the making of docile instruments of profit; and the temperance lessons, stripped of their humbug, are of a piece with the rest. For after all it is capitalism that creates the drink problem, and, in spite of their hypocritical preaching, the masters decline to attack it at its source. They are ever deaf to the appeal of humanity when profit beckons them on. But all their wiles cannot for ever obscure the fact that it is not drink but capitalism that causes the poverty of the workers, and that class rule makes thrift, temperance, and efficiency so many weapons against the latter in the hands of their exploiters. Indeed, no greater condemnation of a system is than that it makes right living a means of increasing the hardships of those who produce. It is the very kernel of the capitalist system that is at fault, and no mere reform can alter it. By Socialism only can these things be changed, for the conquest of capitalist society by the toilers must take place before they can secure the fruits of their industry and the elements of a full and healthy life. Then it will be discovered that intemperance has ceased to be a problem, while the object of public education will at last be the making, not of cheap wage-slaves but, of better men and women.

F. C. Watts

The way out. (1910)

From the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The greatest problem before the working class to-day, the problem that requires immediate attention, is poverty. On all hands the existence, of poverty amid extreme wealth is admitted. All parties, no matter what their label, admit the existence of this problem and trot out one scheme or another that they claim will alleviate the evil. Before considering remedies, it is necessary to discover the cause of the evil, and having found that, to endeavour to, if possible, abolish the evil by removing the cause.

The first important fact that confronts us in this examination is the fact that poverty is confined to one section of the community, and, strangely enough, to that section which alone produces the welter of riches we see around us. We find that it is the hewers of wood and the drawers of water that are poor, while the idle class are rich.

Why is it that those who produce wealth in abundance receive but sufficient to keep them alive ?

It is not that there is not sufficient wealth in the country to supply the needs of the whole people, for we find it admitted on all hands that that wealth is increasing by leaps and bounds, while at the same time the poverty and misery of the workers increase.

The very fact that men able, and willing to produce are unemployed shows that there need be no scarcity of wealth.

There is sufficient for all, but the working class are denied the opportunity of consuming it; nor are they allowed to operate the tools of production in order to produce what they need.

We are forced then to see that members of the working class, while desirous of producing, are prevented from so doing by another class, who own the means of wealth production. This class are thereby enabled to dictate terms to the workers, who are forced to accept them in order to obtain sustenance.

The terms are that they shall create a value far in excess of the amount paid to them in wages. The difference between the value they receive and the value they create is taken by the capitalist as his profit.

This surplus, the result of the robbery of the worker, is piled up by the capitalist, who is unable to consume it fast enough, with the result that sooner or later the markets are glutted and the workers discharged. With the growing productivity of labour we find these periodical gluts recurring with ever greater rapidity. The unemployed army, growing greater and greater, clamouring for a purchaser at almost any price, force down the wages of those employed to the lowest possible level, despite all attempts on the part of the latter to raise them.

The class that produce the wealth are in poverty because that wealth when produced is stolen from them by the capitalist class.

The capitalists are enabled to steal the workers’ product because they own the only means by which they can live.

As we have seen, the working class are compelled to produce more than they receive because they are forced to accept the masters’ terms in order to live. Should they endeavour to take those things necessary for their maintenance, or try to use the means of production for themselves, they are faced with the police and, these not sufficing, the military.

The master class control the fighting forces and are prepared to use them to maintain their position. They are enabled to use those forces through their control of the political machine—which they hold by the votes of the class they have robbed. In a word, the continuation of the workers’ poverty is due to the fact that they have voted their enemies into power.

What, then, is the remedy ? How are the working class to regain that which has been stolen from them ? How are they to stop the robbery in future ?

Obviously by the removal of the root cause ; the ejection from power of the capitalist class ; the control of political power by the working class, in order that they may throw off from their shoulders the class which oppresses them and theieby gain access to the means of wealth production.

This can only be accomplished by the organisation of the working class into a party hostile to their enemy the capitalist class, determined to end capital, capitalist and capitalism.

The capitalist hirelings, led by the “statesman of Labour,” John Burns, tell you that the poverty of the worker is due to his thriftlessness and excessive drinking habits. While telling you this they are compelled to publish figures proving that poverty is on the increase while the expenditure on intoxicating liquors de-creates year by year.

Despite an increased expenditure of £93,000 on wines (certainly not a working class drink), the total drink bill for 1909 shows a decrease of £5,897,997 compared with that of 1908. Taking into consideration the increase in prices the total decrease in the consumption of liqour amounts to about £11,147,997.

Capitalist statisticians and others, while attributing the greater amount of poverty to drink, are compelled to admit that it is not possible to eradicate the “drink evil” while the housing condition of the workers remains as it is. Drinking habits, they admit are largely due to the vile housing accommodation and the course and indigestible food of the workers.

The workers live in the slums and consume bad food because they are poor, so we are brought back again to the original cause, namely, poverty. The Tory party, in order to get the votes of the working class, bring forward a proposal which they call Tariff Reform. They tell us that a tariff placed upon foreign manufactured goods will keep out foreign competition and at the same time raise, by the tax (upon the goods that are to be kept out), sufficient to enable them to finance measures of social reform.

The Tory leaders, however, have admitted that Tariff Reform will rot solve the poverty problem, and a little enquiry into the conditions of the working class in those countries where protection has been established will show that Tariff Reform is no solution.

The Liberal party have been compelled to admit that they have no remedy. Free Trade, they say, is the workers’ real protection, whereas under free trade capitalism the workers starve. Both parties are pledged to support the present system of class ownership and are consequently enemies of the working class,

The Labour Party are pledged to support capitalism through the Liberal party, while in its turn the I.L.P. has sunk its political identity in the Labour Party.

The S.D.P. has all along shown its ignorance of the working-class position. While at times preaching the antagonism of interest existing between the two classes it has constantly blurred the issue by advising the workers to support sections of the master class. It exists merely for the purpose of advocating reforms of the present system, such as State maintenance for school children, the right to work, etc., none of which touches the poverty problem at all. They also have endeavoured to make alliances with the historic enemies of the working class and can be lumped with the other parties as being worthless from the point of view of the worker.

The only party that stands for the entire abolition of capitalism and all that capitalism involves ; the only party that has laid down a clear and definite set of principles in accord with economic truths, and stood by them consistently ; the only party that aims at, and steadfastly works for, the elimination of the causes that make for poverty, is the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Twel.

A British Trust Gets Bigger. (1905)

From the February 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Distillers’ Company, Edinburgh, have intimated that they have concluded an agreement with United Distillers (Limited) of Belfast, whereby one-half of their shares will pass to the Distillers’ Company and make a further issue of capital to meet the purchase price. The United Distillers (Limited) belongs to three of the largest grain distillers in Ireland, and the purchase has been made by the Scottish company to complete their control of the production of raw grain whisky. The Distillers’ Company practically control the world’s markets now for this class of whisky, which is chiefly used by blenders. The existing capital of the Distillers’ Company is £1,920,000, and the new capital will make it £2,100,000.

_______________

The baking of bread by electricity should find considerable favour, not only on account of its economy and cleanliness, but because it would afford a rational means of utilising the electric power of a town at a time when it would not be required for lighting purposes—between midnight and midday. Should the process become general, it would be possible to abolish night-work for bakers.—”Commercial Intelligence.”

_______________

Inverary Castle, and the extensive shootings attached, have been sublet by Mr. A. F. B. Cresswell, with the consent of the Duke of Argyll, to Mr. E. D. Jordan, of Boston, an American millionaire, who comes into occupation this summer. Thus the aristocrat succumbs to the power of the almighty dollar, and the plutocrat reigns in his stead.

_______________

Last Monday it was announced from Middlesborough that there will be a reduction of 3d. per ton on the puddling, and 2½ per cent. on other wages in the North of England iron and steel trades during the months of February and March.

How well is the "Welfare State"? (1957)

From the July 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from the June Socialist Standard).

Health in the Welfare State

Those who sing the praises of the European Welfare States and of the land of the highest wages and greatest prosperity—the U.S. A.—seem to be quite unaware of or to deliberately ignore the ugly, cruel, stupid and tragic features which the model states in both hemispheres have in common. In the totalitarian countries behind the Iron Curtain where Press and platform do not often dwell on the ugly side of things at their end, and where, therefore, information and statistical data on social affairs are not so easily accessible, ignorance may be excusable, but this cannot be said of the peoples of countries where books and Press supply the damning facts and figures with critical comment.

The 1955 report of the largest Austrian Health Service, with close on one million insured persons, provides perhaps the clearest picture of the state of health of the people. In that year the service had to deal with half a million cases of illness. Three million sickness certificates had to be issued.

Prescriptions totalled 8,700,000, which works out at 10 per person per year. In each 1,000 insured persons 193 insured persons or members of the family were treated in hospital. 375,000 bills for spectacles, foot supports, artificial limbs, bandages and other accessories had to be paid, 9 million days of illness were registered, and 3 million days in hospitals. There were 672,000 cases of dental treatment.

These are the records of only ONE, though the largest, Health Insurance Fund to which other sick clubs and the private practitioners have to be added. The city’s many hospitals and clinics are woefully short of beds and are invariably overcrowded. So are the institutions for the mentally sick. The number of inmates in the Vienna mental institutions and lunatic asylums has trebled since 1950. In that year the largest institution took in 735 persons and in 1955 the number rose to 1192. Even if it is true that alcoholism has a lot to do with it, it must be pointed out that frustration and the hard and nerve-racking conditions under which the mass of people have to live and work are in very large measure responsible for people taking to drink and driving them mad.

In a budget debate it was disclosed that in Austria no less than 4,200 million schillings were spent on alcohol, which is half a milliard more than the year before, and two milliards on tobacco. In Germany the situation is even worse, with nearly 50 per cent more on both items. How hopeless the problem is for the reformer or the apostle of anti-alcoholism is clear from the fact that prohibition, or even curtailment of the production of beer, wine and Schnapps would involve the loss of 348 million schillings for the government's tax collectors, not to speak of the serious effect on employment. An increase of alcoholism is noticeable in almost the whole world. Sweden has had to take drastic steps to restrict the rapidly increasing consumption of alcoholic drinks. A report says that since the abolition of rationing in 1915, offences and crimes have frightfully increased. If the number of unfortunates who have been and are being driven mad by the iron heel behind the iron curtain, is probably incalculable, the number of persons in mental institutions in the “free world” countries is no secret—it is, for example, 750,000 in the U.S.A.

Crime

This chapter is not intended to deal with such deeds (perpetuated by governments) as training young people in the use of instruments of mass murder and destruction. Whatever can be said about war in the jungle and in the wild and woolly past of the human race it is now and has been for a century already—a crime. True, it is so regarded not only by Socialists, but unless you are consistent in your condemnation and earnestly concerned with the all-important question of the real cause of the dastardly deed and prepared to work, as Socialists do, towards the elimination of that cause, the mere expression of your moral or sentimental indignation remain ineffectual and futile. Thus, with all their professions of peace and desire for disarmament, the welfare states and the totalitarian regimes continue the status quo, with all its contradictions and imbecilities—poverty and misery in die midst of ever-increasing accumulation of wealth and possibilities of enjoyment of life for everybody—in other words: with Demon Capital in the saddle. Whilst chewing platitudes about peace, freedom, sovereignty and social justice, the Labour Government of the United Kingdom brought in the atom-bomb, and in another welfare state—Austria—it is the very leaders of the “Socialist Party of Austria” who are the chief promoters of a new army. And in order to imbue the young recruits with the necessary fighting spirt, welfare statesmen and writers continue as in pre-welfare days, to give to historical events the bias required by the national (read capitalist) interests. So important is the fostering of that spirit to the powers that be that if for example, there was no “Südtirol question," both Rome and Vienna would have to invent one.

Our purpose in this chapter was, however, to deal with the crimes committed not by order or at the behest of governments, but by individuals driven to desperation and anti-social acts by an anti-social and insane system of society. It is to show that in the welfare state most of the evils inseparable from the money system flourish as abundantly as ever before. Burglaries, robberies with violence, theft and larceny, shocking murders and assaults, cruelties to children, etc., are on the order of the day. In January the leading article in a Vienna newspaper wrote: “With great alarm the public learns that the number of murders and general crimes with violence have for weeks again sharply increased. The excitement about the brutal assault on a postman last Saturday has hardly abated when news comes of a new far more terrible crime. In their tumble-down barracks an old couple was found battered to death and robbed of what little savings they possessed. A youth of 17 was afterwards arrested for the murder." The same paper reported the murder of a 25-year-old wife by her husband. Two boys of 17 and 18 raped and murdered a girl of 15 on her way home. A one-arm invalid killed his wife and six children with an axe. Another man murdered his wife and four children. Six boys stole within a short time 31 autos. “Christmas is the time"—another paper wrote—“in which the number of suicides and attempted suicides is far above the average. Among the many “tireds-of-life" this Christmas was the 40-year-old A. H., who gassed herself and her two children."

It is interesting that within a few days of one paper boasting that Austria was a land without gangsters, there occurred no fewer than three bank robberies in classical gangster style, with autos and the rest (two in the country and one in Vienna), in one of which two young robbers perished. And so one could go on ad infinitum, every day bringing new reports of crime and tragedies. Rarely are they reported in the foreign press, since every country has more than enough locally to fill their own regular columns of police and court reports.

In these unholy and unblessed orgies of crime, cruelty and fraud which, by the way, give employment to whole armies of policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, and wardens and executioners, lawyers and judges, reporters and printers and photographers, detectives and special transporters, in addition to experts in safety devices, safe-makers, etc., etc., the annual number of convictions of all kinds over recent years is invariably just over 100,000 in this country, 20 per cent. of which are for criminal killing and assault; the rest are for fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, insurance swindles and other “scandals."

With the Socialist's preference for quoting his enemies confirming the truth of his statements and criticism, here is what the Austrian Sozialminister Proksch said at a conference of the “Aktion Jugend am Werk” (7/11/1956): It is the tragic fate of the young about to start a profession, to be faced with unsettled problems. The advisory committee tries to help them in making a decision, but what good is this to them when there are no suitable openings and nobody wants them. It is hypocrisy to accuse youth of being spoiled and depraved when nothing is being done for their professional education. What is to become of a youth who has to wait months and sometimes longer for a chance of an apprenticeship? One must not be surprised if young people eventually become criminals." Remarkable, is it not? that this same Sozialminister should only a few months earlier have declared: “The Welfare State brings welfare to everybody, and with it assures well-being to every citizen”

If it will console British readers that things are said to be worse in America, here is what Sir Basil Henriques, former chairman of East London Juvenile Court, said after he had spent 51 days in the U.SA discussing juvenile delinquency in 20 cities and 14 States: "Every court where I sat I heard cases which were more serious than any I have heard in my 33 years on the bench.” On the television, he said: “I saw nothing but murder, divorce and prison scenes.” And if you should happen to get hold of a book “Never Come Morning," by Nelson Algren, you may come to the conclusion that really Sir Basil could hardly have exaggerated.

Accidents at work

The number of accidents at work is rising from year to year. From 1953 with 129,449 accidents, with 422 killed, it rose to 162,500, with 670 killed, in 1956. They do not only bring physical pain for the worker and mental depression (fear of losing his job) of the injured, but also distress to wives and children left behind after the death of their breadwinner. Almost unnoticed in the sensational revolt in Hungary and the Suez conflict, there occurred (in October 1956) the terrible tragedy when a bridge under construction and serving in the building of a dam at the Ottenstein power stations collapsed burying 10 workers under huge blocks of concrete. The accident, coming after the previous year's catastrophe at the Kapron dam, added its tragic quota to the already great number of widows and to the 25 orphans left behind after the previous disaster. Twelve more children were orphaned on 19th and 20th March when their parents lost their lives in a cycling accident near Salzburg.

So is the tragedy of accidents aggravated under capitalism by an individual having to provide for a number of others (wife, children, old folks) who are, through the breadwinner's death, deprived of the wherewithal to live. Under Socialism, when no individual will be dependent on another individual for his means of sustenance, but when every man, woman and child will be the responsibility of the whole community, any unfortunate accident to an individual will then not involve such tragic consequences to others. (This aspect will be dealt with more fully later in this series of articles.) 

Rudolf Frank

(To  be continued.)

Life and Times: The Beer Festival (2022)

The Life and Times column from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the frequent objections to the possibility of socialism is that it proposes a moneyless society. After all, no one willingly works for free. This truism runs counter to examples of how, even under money-driven capitalism, a great deal of work is undertaken freely.

I am going to outline one example which centres on a community beer festival. Over the last weekend in November, 2021, such a festival ran in the village hall within the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley. Running from mid-Friday afternoon through to late Sunday afternoon, it eventually raised, that is made a profit of, over £10,000.

The first thing that needs to be acknowledged here is that this is hardly an exemplar of socialism. The whole purpose of the festival was to raise money to fund local community projects, the motivation was blatantly profit.

How could it be otherwise? There was a time during the prominence of Arthur Scargill and the militancy of the NUM that the area around Barnsley was referred to in the media as the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. More of a nod to Soviet-style state capitalism than anything to do with actual socialism.

Barnsley, just like anywhere else in the world, at present abides by the rules of capitalism. This means community events and projects require money. However, just as the seeds of capitalism were nurtured and gradually grew under the previous system, feudalism, so it is possible to identify a similar sowing of socialist notions under present capitalist conditions.

The thing to note is that apart from myself, none of those involved in organising and running the festival would identify as socialists. Rather the contrary, especially those who are local business men and women. This demonstrates that a willingness to give time and effort for free does not have to be motivated by ideology.

And there was a considerable amount of time and effort given by those involved, beginning with an organising group that began meeting in July. At this point those who were prepared to plan the event came to the fore. They met regularly and identified all the component parts of a festival and the arrangements that needed to be made to realise those plans.

Then the business people came in, the ones involved in the licensing trade and brewing whose direct commercial interests ran counter to the festival in that the local pubs would lose custom over that weekend. Nonetheless, on top of running their own businesses, they worked hard to source and arrange the supply of beers from a wide range of breweries, not just their own.

Other local business people sponsored the barrels, and this at a time when Covid lockdowns had affected them over a long period. Admittedly, as sponsors there was an advertising aspect, but I suspect this brought more local kudos than actual profit.

The event itself was run entirely by volunteers. From those who the day before set up the bars, primed the pumps and cleaned the lines, decorated the hall, arranged the furniture and so on, to those who pulled the pints and generally ran the event and then dismantled it all and cleared it away on the Monday.

On Friday evening the local primary schools came along with teachers and parents to sing carols around the Christmas tree, then on the Saturday, local singers and musicians performed for free.

To reiterate, I am not claiming this as an example of socialism in action. Patently, money remained the driving force behind it all and commercial profits were made by the breweries whose beer was sold.

Yet all of the work required for the festival to take place was given freely, and in a commercial context. How much more likely is it that people will be willing to contribute their labour in a society without commercial pressures, especially for the common good?

It is surely clear that the motivation was the wellbeing of the community, the common good and this elicited a great deal of local support from the wider community. If this is possible under capitalism in straitened times then there are clear grounds for positing a society where this is the norm.

Also, the wide range of people freely giving what they could of their time and energy is a practical demonstration that ’from each according to their ability’ is not just a theoretical aspiration. And even while those people would not necessarily identify as socialists, indeed they probably represent the main political parties in their voting habits, they willingly acted in practical ways that surely encourage the presently small number of socialists.

This is but one of many examples throughout society of people working for free for the common good. There’s a long way to go to realise socialism as a worldwide system, but this was one small step, be it, in the circumstances, an unsteady one.

Dave Alton

Human Welfare No, Profits Yes (2005)

From the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It hit the country like a bomb. It was unexpected, unusual and more so coming from what is considered as less endowed members of the community. 27 people had died after consuming illicit brew, brewed, distributed and consumed in the full knowledge of the administration and other leaders. Yes. Just like that. The distributor of the brew, Beatrice Kuvia, was arrested and charged with selling beer without a valid licence. But not with the deaths of 27 souls.

The beer was brewed and laced with chemicals not for the good of the consumers but for profit. And that’s where the whole story lies.

The vehicle carrying the otherwise referred to as illicit drink passed through 8 police roadblocks and 10 senior police officers had their palms greased to allow the safe passage to the drink to its consumers. The provincial administration knew the woman distributor had been in the business for as long as the existence of the world. She had been taken to court on numerous occasions but in all these had been let off the hook by being fined and, having the money, was able to pay. At other times, she was released to do communal work. So the judiciary is culpable. Who knows, maybe the judges were corrupted.

This inhuman behaviour is prevalent not only in Machakos where the incident occurred but other parts of Kenya as well. It has been happening because there has been no political or otherwise will to stamp out the behaviour. People are ready to be bribed to do things they’d normally not have done. Poor Kenyans are ready to partake any brew just by looking at the price tag. The said brews cost 10 shillings per 300ml bottle.

But in a capitalist world such things are bound to occur. What is paramount is the money coming out of such transactions, but not the morality of the trade. And unless we come to our senses and know what is the real cause of incidents such as the above, we’ll continue to die, be deprived of our rights and remain docile in social situations.

It’s time socialism tried to rear its head and dare capitalism and capitalists.

Patrick Ndege, 

Nairobi, Kenya

Greasy Pole: Alcoholics Non-Anonymous (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just when the Lib Dems could have been pardoned for congratulating themselves on their progress towards being the electoral alternative to the Labour Party their leader Charles Kennedy had to spoil their fun by catching a stomach bug, or smoking too much, or suffering from the over-consumption of alcohol. Or perhaps all three. Whatever the matter with him it prevented Kennedy contributing to the pointless shenanigans of Prime Ministers Questions and the Budget statement – which cost his party some TV publicity. He made it, just about, to the Lib Dem’s spring conference but that did not turn out too well because the media concentrated on the fact that he had lost weight and was sweating as he spoke. Of course that might have been down to nervous guilt at having to mouth yet more of the nauseating deceptions inescapable from capitalist politics. What worried his party’s spin doctors was that his condition was so entrancing to the media that it got in the way of them getting the kind of publicity they crave. “We could not” wailed one M.P., “have too many weeks like last week again”.

So Kennedy got a lot of advice – unwanted, unqualified, unheeded – about his health. Cut down on fags, take more exercise, drink less. And while he was about it could he give some attention to his lack of what is called gravitas?  It does not help the case of a party which has ambitions to be involved in government to be led by someone known as Chatshow Charlie after his appearance on the politician-baiting Have I Got News For You. It does not help either for him to have so keen a reputation for what is politely known as a “sociable lifestyle”. Kennedy brushed it off as a bad case of media stereotyping; as a red-headed Highlander he had to be assumed to be over- fond of a tipple which, if it sometimes gets the better of him, will have to explained away as a passing malady.

Parliamentary Drunks

Well of course Kennedy is not the first example of the Mother of Parliaments nurturing someone with an alcohol problem. Arthur Greenwood was a power in the Labour Party between the wars. In Ramsay MacDonald’s 1929 government he was Minister of Health (a lot more important a job than it is today) and after the 1935 general election, while the MacDonald experience still tormented Labour  he was elected  Deputy Leader of the party. But his addiction to alcohol prevented him reaching his potential in the ascent of the greasy pole. By 1940 he was losing his grip, although in the Coalition government and later in the 1945 Attlee government he was allocated some lesser posts. It was almost as if someone felt sorry for him. He died in 1954.

Then there was Nicholas Scott, who was M.P. for Chelsea before it was combined with Kensington to form the safest Tory seat in the country. In the Thatcher government Scott was Minister of State for Social Security and the Disabled, which sounded like a nice job for a man with  a reputation as a kindly toff. Whatever chances he had of being nominated to stand for the Tories in the new seat (the M.P. for Kensington was obligingly standing down) were blown away when he was found face down in the street after attending a Conservative Party reception. The Tories who had successfully stomached the Falklands war, the defeat of the miners and the introduction of harsher conditions for benefit claimants, drew the line at their Member advertising his drink problem and Scott was deselected. In his place the Tories chose Alan Clark, who was not known as kindly but who could be relied on to drink with the best of them without falling over in public.

But Clark was not immune to the effects of alcohol and this, combined with his ready contempt for many of the Members, created a problem for him. In July 1983, as Parliamentary Secretary of State at the Department of Employment, he had to commend- speak in the Commons in support of – an Order. Instead of studying the speech prepared for him Clark preferred to spend the evening dining and “wine tasting” with a friend  and as a result when it was time, later in the evening, for him to speak he was “muzzy . . . I found myself . . . sneering at the more cumbrous and unintelligible passages . . . I gabbled. Sometimes I turned over two pages at once, sometimes three. What did it matter?” This rambling went on until Clare Short, never one to shrink from putting her foot in it, said that although she had read that it was not permissible for an Honourable Member to accuse another of being drunk in the House she believed Clark was incapable and “It is disrespectful to the House and to the office that he holds that he should come here in this condition”. Clark fumbled to the end of his speech. “This week,” he recorded “I went up a stubby ladder; then down a very long snake.”

George Brown  

Probably the most obvious, colourful and instructive example was George Brown, who almost became Labour Party leader and so Prime Minister after the 1964 election. We can only imagine what sort of government it would have been with such an intrusive alcoholic at its head. Brown was not one of Labour’s high flying university graduates; he came up the hard way with a father who drove lorries for a living. A spell as a fur salesman may have provided him with a taste for the high life as well as a sharp, manipulative approach to problems, not to mention a liking for a drink. It did not take him long, after being returned as MP for Belper in the 1945 general election, to immerse himself  in some back stabbing schemes. He took a leading part in a conspiracy to replace Attlee as Prime Minister with Ernie Bevin but Bevin only approved of conspiracies of which he was the instigator and brutally rejected Brown’s advances.

As the post war generation of Labour leaders died away they were replaced by the likes of Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Brown. In the leadership election after Gaitskell’s death in 1963 the final contest was between Brown and Wilson and Brown did not take it lightly when Wilson won easily. His bitterness endured, in spite of all Wilson’s efforts to heal the breach so that they could both get on with the serious work of running British capitalism—like disciplining the workers, supporting the American war effort in Vietnam, fostering the prosperity of the ruling class and so on.

Perhaps in the faint hope of placating Brown and of keeping him too busy to organise any more conspiracies, Wilson put him in charge of a new ministry with a brief to stimulate the British economy outside the restraining hands of the Treasury. It was called the Department of Economic Affairs; Wilson had his doubts about the move: “I was taking a risk with George Brown, with his erratic habits. The drink problem was always with us.” During the first few months of that government Barbara Castle and Dick Crossman recorded thirteen different occasions when Brown was incapably drunk. But Wilson was canny enough to have been aware that he was driving a wedge between Brown and his other big rival James Callaghan, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer could be relied on the fight the Treasury’s corner against the new ministry.

National Plan

With characteristic energy Brown got his ministry up and running and within a couple of months he produced its first offspring – a Declaration of Intent in which the employers and unions made vows about wage demands, restrictive practises and job security. It was, in brief, an agreement to make capitalism behave out of character and so was doomed but Brown was not deterred from producing his next great delusion. The National Plan emerged in September 1965, with a lot of publicity about long term planning and how a little more effort from everyone (well, at least from those who work for their living) could bring about a controlled economy without any of the slumps and booms which  had become so tiresomely regular.

The National Plan was supposed to organise an increase in national production of 25 percent over the next six years through an annual growth of 4 percent. In fact the unrealistic nature of the whole enterprise was quickly exposed when, just before the plan was published, Brown informed the Cabinet that he could foresee a growth of only 1 percent over the coming year. After the Plan had been consigned to a discredited  past it emerged that the idea of 25 percent growth was not based on any real experience but was an assumption followed by scraping around for evidence to support it. The Plan did not last for six years but for only about ten months. The crisis of July 1966 when, in Wilson’s words, the government’s economic strategy was “blown off course” was enough to collapse all Brown’s promises. The voluntary assumptions in wage negotiations were replaced by giving statutory force to the decisions of the Prices and Incomes Board. It was, in other words, back to Square One; for a while the Plan gathered dust in a few Whitehall trays while the Treasury savoured its victory. In a straight swap with Michael Stewart, Brown became an unlikely Foreign Secretary.

Resign

More and more, he developed the reputation of a hopeless drunk. Ray Gunter – one of his admirers – said he started on the whisky at nine o’clock in the morning. Denis Healey got fed up with “acting as a psychiatric nurse to a patient who was often violent”. When Wilson and a couple of his ministers responded to the latest currency crisis by closing the gold market, which meant asking the Queen to declare a Bank Holiday, Brown offered yet another resignation but perhaps to his surprise – and everyone else’s relief – this time it stuck and he was out of a job. For a while he sulked; nobody took seriously his declaration that “the left has a new leader”. In the 1970 general election he lost his seat at Belper to Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a Tory distinguished by an ambition to set up a kind of McCarthyite pursuit of Communists in this country. Brown tried his luck with the SDP, went to the Lords and ended his days, predictably, with some comfortable directorships in industry.

Alcohol persuades a lot of its dependents that life is not as bad as it is; problems seem a lot more tractable through the bottom of a glass. It also encourages some people to believe that they have abilities which they did not know they possessed – like the drunk who imagines he is Pavarotti, waking you up singing in the street in the small hours. Perhaps that is why alcoholism is seen so often among politicians. But alcoholic delusions are dangerous, not only to the drunks themselves but to others as well.

Ivan

Some publications. (1906)

Book Review from the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women as Barmaids (P. S. King & Sons,) l/- nett. 

An essay in legislative tinkering, endorsed by the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop of Southwark. Of a total of 4,171,751 women engaged in various occupations, 27,707 are barmaids. The argument is that the moral atmosphere of a public house is highly reprehensible and results in a larger proportion of assaults, suicides and murders in the barmaid business than in any other. Because of this reprehensible atmosphere and its effects "The Joint Committee on the Employment of Barmaids" (of whose existence we hear for the first time) recommends a bill for the abolition of women in public houses, except when they are the wives or daughters of licence holders when the relationship may, presumably, be expected to counteract the evils of the environment—although if it is the atmosphere which is at fault, relationships with the publican could not greatly affect the results complained of. Wives and daughters would still be exposed to the dangers referred to, as for example, assault for refusing to serve a customer alleged to be drunk. (It is a quite common we understand in such cases, for the irate customer to demonstrate his or her sobriety by flinging a glass at the barmaid.)

The Joint Committee will not endeavour to ascertain why the atmosphere of a public house is as bad as they have concluded it to be. They will not attempt to lay bare the roots of the disease. They will simply turn 27,707 women out on to an already over-crowded female labour market and then congratulate themselves that these women at any rate, will no longer be affected by the lewd and alcoholically stimulated sensuality of places of call within the meaning of the Act. And the women will, if they are lucky, get other employment where, as in the Potteries, sexual inebriation is stated to be as bad as it can be anywhere, or failing that, may go to recruit the ranks of prostitution or increase the general proportion of suicides. Which is as perfect an example of an endeavour to kill time by putting the hands of the clock forward as it is possible to meet.

The Joint Committee seem to have missed the fact that they are merely pottering with an effect without reference to its cause, and that the only purpose that can be served by prohibiting the sale of drink by women is to shift the problem, not to deal with it. If alcoholic and sexual excitement is the cause of the trouble (of course such excitement is itself merely an effect) it will not be allayed by the absence of barmaids to any notable extent. Failing gratification in the bars, it will go outside. Then we presume the Joint Committee on Barmaids will become the Joint Committee on something else and promote another bill. It is very tiring.

Proper Gander: Fancy a Pint? (2012)

The Proper Gander TV column from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many of us unwind after yet another unfulfilling day of wage-slavery with a glass or two of temporary escape? Alcohol is one of our coping strategies, but it’s also, of course, a great social lubricant. Pubs, bars and clubs just wouldn’t be the same without “the magic liquid that unlocks the door to the human heart”. And our drinking takes place in a context of the “unwritten codes and rituals” which govern what, when and how we drink. BBC4’s documentary The Rules of Drinking took us on a pub-crawl through Britain’s boozing habits. Along the way it showed how the etiquette around alcohol has changed over the last seventy-odd years.

For example, our place in society has often been reflected in what we drink. Programmes like this rely on generalisations. So, if you’re a miner wanting to wash your throat of grime from t’pit, then you’d choose beer. If you’re a demure debutante, then you’d sip cocktails until you got terribly squiffy. And if you’re a twenty-first century teenager, then it’s nine pints of lager, two flaming sambucas and enough vodka to drown an elephant.

The programme also showed how alcohol’s etiquette extends to how we drink. In working men’s clubs, beer and whisky was the usual tipple for everyone, so your status within the club was reflected in where you drank it. Apparently, the younger members would stand on the lino until they were invited to stand on the carpeted section by one of the older clientele, a sign that they had been accepted. Women usually only stood behind the bar.

Nowadays, we’ve gone back to drinking the same amounts as before the First World War, albeit in different ways. Keeping up with other social changes, the rules around drinking have became less rigid over the decades – cue inevitable footage of plastered twentysomethings vomiting up alcopops in the gutter and picking fights with double-decker buses.

Even when alcohol is used to try and blot out the pressures of capitalism, the ways we drink it still reveal something of our class position. Documentaries like this can get away with glossing over the details as long as they distract us with enough archive footage of garish 70s dinner parties or men in flat caps. And The Rules of Drinking served up enough enjoyable old shots to get you drunk on nostalgia.

Mike Foster