I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways, the selection of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the new Tory Prime Minister made political history. What Macmillan called “the usual processes of consultation” will one day be the subject of countless essays, articles and hopeful theses on the techniques of political dealing. In the end, Home’s succession was a surprise to most of the observers who are supposed to be able to forecast such things.

But in one way—a way that will not be mentioned in the histories—Home’s appointment came up as expected. It was certain that whoever got the job would do so in a smokescreen of what can only be called nonsense. There was, in fact, a different sort of nonsense for each of the candidates. Hailsham was said to be tough, colourful, impetuous—just the man to give some stick to Khruschev or, darkly hinted the Labour Party, to press the button in a disastrous moment of irascibility. Butler was smooth, remote, soft on coshboys. And so on.

The nonsense which was put out about Home was influenced by his peculiar circumstances. There was the usual stuff about the new Prime Minister’s amiable manner, about his propensity for chatting with Foreign Office chars, about the way he eats his breakfast porridge. We have grown accustomed to such stuff and have come to assume that it is all meant to prove something.

What was unique about the Home propaganda revolved around the fact that he was the latest of a long line of Scottish noblemen. The first of these was created a peer by James III, although his gratitude at this was not enough to dissuade him from later joining a rebel movement against the king. That particular peer died in 1491 later holders of the title met a grisly end or figured in a long feud with another Border family. The amiability for which the last Lord Home was famous could easily be due to the serene security in which he has always lived and to the curious reasoning by which some aristocratic families convince themselves that they hold their superior situation in life as a favour to the less fortunate masses.

This, as we might have expected, was meat and drink to the Labour propagandists. Just as they were basing their appeal on a drive to modernise and stimulate British capitalism, just as Wilson was telling us that the future lies in a disturbingly scientific Britain, the Tories make themselves appear outdated, obsessed with the old school tie, by electing the inheritor of an ancient Scottish earldom as their leader! How can such a man, demanded Mr. Wilson, know anything about the problems of kids taking the eleven-plus, or of a couple who are paying the mortgage off their house?

How indeed? But then, even if we accept that Home does not know anything about these things, would there be any advantage for us if he did know? The Labour Party have always tried to present an image of themselves as men who have come up the hard way and who are therefore, familiar with working class problems. Today they may pose as the party for young graduates who are bursting to get their hands on a computer and start driving the deadwood out of the boardrooms; not so long ago they were full of ex-miners who talked about getting the bosses off our backs. Yet what happened when the ex-miners came to power? The 1945 Labour government had many men like James Griffiths and Ernest Bevin whose early lives had been of appalling hardship. Did that government run the affairs of British capitalism any more humanely for that? Did they ever shrink from taking measures which, although essential to the interests of the British ruling class, were harmful to the very people whose votes and work had raised them to power? They did not.

The humble beginnings of some of the Labour ministers did not prevent them running British capitalism in the established manner, with all that that means. Indeed, perhaps there were times between 1945 and 1951 when miners, or dockers, or some other group of workers, may have wished that they were being governed by people who did not know so much about their problems—and about their methods of trying to alleviate them.

For all that, Wilson’s thrust at the fourteenth Earl was typically shrewd and may have set the tone for Labour's future attacks on Home. The Tories’ reply was enough to show that they are as concerned as they need be about the aristocratic lineage of their new leader. Heralded by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative machine set out to convince us that Home’s selection proved that a man can become Prime Minister on his own ability, and in spite of the fact that he is an Earl. This, in some peculiar way, is supposed to mean that we are developing a classless society in which all Britons are equal. Home himself made his own version of the point when he commented that the Labour leader is probably the fourteenth Mr. Wilson, which was joyously trumpeted by the Daily Telegraph as the best crack for a long time.

We can see, then, that the elevation of Home has released a flood of nonsense not just about the man himself but about the class to which he belongs and about the class division of society. Class, we know, is something of a dirty word, Every capitalist party strives to assure us that they do not stand for the interests of any one class and that their policies are designed to benefit us all. At the same time they work hard to convince us that their opponents' schemes are class-inspired. The Labour Party damns the Tories as the rich man’s party; the Conservatives sneer that the Labour Party is obsessed with class bigotry. That is not the end of the confusion. Some people think that classes do not exist, others believe that they do exist but they are not sure where the divisions between them begin and end. They talk about lower middle and upper-working class and other, equally meaningless, divisions.

Now the only way to clear up confusion is to present the facts. What, first of all, is a class? It has nothing to do with how much a person may earn, nor the sort of job he does, nor the school he went to. A class is a group of people who are united, whether they admit to it or not, by a common economic interest. This means that in modern capitalist society people are split into two classes, each of them with opposing economic interests. In this situation, it is nonsense to talk of a middle class—a class with “middle” interests somewhere between the two. The two classes which exist today are, on the one hand, those who have to work for a wage for their living and on the other those who can live without having to go out to work. The first of these—the working class have virtually no property in the means of producing wealth and for that reason are forced to rely on their wage to live. They sell their working ability to the other class —who, because they own enough stocks, shares, bonds, and so on, can live very well without having to work. The interests of capitalist and worker are opposed because one is a seller, and the other a buyer, of a commodity—the working ability of the worker.

It is a common fallacy that the gap between the classes is growing daily smaller. Yet there is obviously a pretty big gap between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the working people of Scotland—the miners, the dockers, the clerks, the farm hands and the rest. The evidence, in fact, says that the gap is as large as ever. The Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey for 1962 gives some idea of what it means to be a member of an average working class family. In the year under review, the ‘families which had a weekly income of between £15 and £20 spent an average of £1 14s. 4d. a week on their housing, £5 7s. 10d. on food—and made what the Survey calls a “net loss” of 4s. 4d. on betting. We know, because these figures are pretty general for all of us, that this sort of expenditure does not allow a very opulent life. But that is all that the average member of the working class can afford.

On the other side of the gap it is a very different story. Last September a young heiress lost her life m a sailing accident off the South Coast. Although she was only 21 when she died, she left a net amount of £82,309—which is far more than any worker can ever dream of earning. A classless society? The Earl of Harrington recently put up for auction his family seat, Elvaston Castle, and the 4,500 acre estate that goes with it. This estate includes three villages. This sale, which was worth over a million pounds to the Earl, will not leave him homeless. He owns 5,000 acres and will be going to live in his other place in County Limerick. These are only two glimpses at life on the other side of the gap. We may not exactly know, but we can take a guess, at what that life is like and at the sort of expenditure the people, on that side can afford. It will not be anything like that of the average family under the Ministry of Labour's microscope.

It is obvious on which side Sir Alec is. He is a member of the capitalist class who also happens to lead a government which avowedly stands for capitalism. The Labour Party may not have many leaders to compare with Home's aristocratic background, but this does not alter the fact that they also stand for capitalism. In fact, what matters is not whether the men who run the private property system of society are blue-blooded or bear the blue scars which prove that they once sweated and suffered down a coal mine. Experience has told us that the ex-miner runs capitalism as ruthlessly as any Tory nobleman. The important thing is what each of them stands for.

Capitalism, by its class ownership of the means of living, its inequalities and its privileges, perpetuates the class system. It is hypocrisy for a party to say that they are opposed to class privileges while they stand for the social system which fosters them. And all the capitalist parties are guilty of this. All of them, in whatever accent, pay lip service to human equality. And all of them in fact support the world in which the masses are condemned to the paltry and the shoddy while a small minority own the land we walk over, the things we work with, almost our very lives themselves. This minority live, to put it mildly, very well off the masses. Perhaps, of a night, they offer up an extra prayer—I’m alright, Alec; do your best to keep it that way.

Douglas-Home has no proposals to alter this state of affairs and neither have his Labour and Liberal opponents. If class society is to be brought to an end, the first essential is that the nonsense has to stop. But capitalist parties thrive—indeed they live—on nonsense. If the working class were to see through it all—now that would really make history and Alec would no longer be alright.

Ivan

Election Special: Leaders and Led (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the issues in this election will concern the personalities of the various political leaders. Many people will vote for the Labour Party because they like Mr. Wilson, or for the Tories, because they admire Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The assumption behind these votes is that, whoever the leader happens to be, it is necessary that somebody holds the job.

But is this true? There are innumerable leaders in the world today—political, religious, trade union, and so on—yet none of them is capable of doing anything about the world’s problems. And this applies equally to the leaders of the past, who spent a lifetime assuring people that they could do something about capitalism's ailments but died with the world in just as big a mess as ever.

In spite of this, the working class continue to put their faith in leaders. As one set fall from grace, the search is started for a new set and each time the searchers convince themselves that they have at last found the honest, consistent and capable men they would like to have at the top. They never, apparently, consider the proposition that all leaders are futile.

Leaders, in fact, exist by virtue of the ignorance of the people they lead. And the more emphasis is put upon the leader, the more gullible and unthinking are the followers. Yet what point is there in a leader who has to listen to the rank and file? The ultimate logic of leadership is the dictator.

With political understanding, leaders are unnecessary. When the working class have grasped the nature of capitalist society, when they understand how it inevitably produces war and poverty and insecurity, they will be immune to the blandishments of aspiring leaders.

With knowledge the people of the world will understand the cause of capitalism’s problems, and realise that they will only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. That will need, not leader,, but a consciously Socialist working class.

Until that happens we face the chaos and brutality of capitalism. When it does happen, there will be a world of happiness, freedom and plenty.

Tories : No holds barred (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like someone picking at a scab, the Tories seem unable to forget their leadership controversy.

Even the declarations of unity—almost every weekend at least one Conservative M.P. tells a meeting somewhere what a sound fellow Sir Alec Douglas-Home is—only draw attention to the fact that the controversy is still going on. The most ardent of speeches merely succeeds in suggesting that, if Home were not under fire, there would be no need for such a show of loyalty towards him.

It is, in fact, an established tradition—and one with good political reason—in the Conservative Party always to do their best to present a united front against all comers. Sometimes, it is true, we get a glimpse of knives flashing in the background behind this front; but generally the Tories do not treat us to the spectacle of the glorious public rows which the Labour Party have indulged in.

The Tories have always posed as the gentleman’s party, implying that, whatever the difficulties, they know how to behave themselves. This should deceive nobody. Precisely because they are a political party aiming to run capitalism, and especially because they are never far from the seat of power, the Conservatives, collectively and individually, must be as ruthless as anyone else.

They have had their share of leaders who have filled this particular bill for example Stanley Baldwin, who played the political game with a relentless cunning under the guise of a pipe-sucking, ruminative, honest countryman. More recently, too, the gentleman’s party have had their tough infighters. There was a lot of truth in the crack from Harold Wilson (who knows a thing or two about this subject himself) that whenever Macmillan, when he was Prime Minister, came back from abroad, Mr. Butler hurried to the airport to grip him warmly by the throat.

At the moment there is obviously a bitter struggle going on for the leadership of the Conservative Party. From some points of view this may appear as a battle between Maudling, Heath and McLeod for the succession after Home has gone. Whether or not this is true, a battle to succeed Home may of itself be enough to unseat him.

Sir Alec, it seems, wants to stay, although some political correspondents whisper that he is weary of it all and is only waiting for his troublesome underlings to decide who is to take his place and then he will fade away into the substantial shadows of Coldstream. It is possible that Home’s hand was forced into agreeing to the new method of electing future Tory leaders—something unknown in a party which, as befits gentlemen, has always relied upon discreet soundings rather than an open vote.

Home assured us that, although he was very pleased with the new election plan, he did not think highly enough of it to allow it to apply to himself. He, who came to the leadership through the customary processes of consultation, was not going to risk losing it all in a vulgar, demotic election. Perhaps there is some political sense in this. If Home agreed to stand, and was opposed, the split in the Tory ranks would be revealed for all to see. If he stood and lost . . . but that simply does not bear thinking about, in the deep leather armchairs of the Carlton. Better to leave the whole beastly thing alone.

The election plan was conceded only after a long period of agitation. Men like Mr. Humphrey Berkeley were the frontrunners in this, but behind the scenes there must have been more powerful—and more hopeful—voices also pressing for the same thing. Of course, when it was all settled all good Tories made the best of it, claiming that they had found an ultra-democratic method of electing their leader. They forgot that they had always insisted that the method they were abandoning gained a far clearer assessment of opinion in their party, and was therefore more democratic, than any simple election.

They also forgot—or ignored—the fact that leadership has nothing to do with democracy. All capitalist parties agree that it is necessary to have a leader, and that it is his job to lead. But this means that the leader must often go against popular wishes, for what is the point of having a leader to take decisions if he is also supposed to take orders from the people he is leading?

The Tories clear up this point very simply, by making no secret of the fact that they intend to run—and perhaps reform—capitalism from day to day as they think fit, with no reference to their members. The Labour Party used to have a different line. Their members were supposed to have a voice in deciding their policy; some of them may actually have thought that the decisions of a Labour conference would influence a Labour government. There is no room for doubt on this score now. Labour has made it clear that they will govern as British capitalism requires, and not at the dictates of their members, who are liable to get all sorts of woolly and inconvenient notions about keeping out of wars and sticking by election promises. Democracy, in other words has been put firmly in its place.

Home’s sudden elevation to the Premiership was attacked by many people, especially of course the Labour Party, on the grounds that he is an aristocrat. These attacks were based on the argument that aristocrats are bound to govern badly because they are aloof from the great mass of honest, horny handed people. The corollary of this is that political leaders who come from the ordinary people are sure to govern us wisely and equitably.

We do not have to work very hard to dispose of this delusion. Labour governments have always prided themselves in having more than one son of the toiling masses among their ranks. Sometimes these men have held top jobs, yet they have done them in much the same way as any High Tory aristocrat.

There was, for example, Jimmy Thomas, who was so proud of his engine driver background that he went around mislaying and misplacing as many aitches as he possibly could, much to the amusement of the opulent circles in which he moved. (He once complained, at a glittering social gathering, of having “an ’ell of an ’eadache”, whereupon the late Lord Birkenhead advised him to “go home and take an aspirate.”) Then there was Ernie Bevin, who cultivated the same habit, allied to a fondness for blunt speaking which recalled his beginnings as a farm labourer.

Neither of these men, when they were in power, did anything to encourage us to elect their like to office again. The interests of the British capitalist class had no more zealous defenders than they. They walked with kings but made sure that they did not lose the common touch, which was so useful at election times and when addressing the TUC.

All capitalist parties are wedded to the lie that this is the age of the Common Man. It is true that the Common Man sometimes gets to power, but when he does so he runs capitalism as ruthlessly—and often with a sight more cunning —than any landed lord. The Labour Party has always set the pace in propagating the lie, although nowadays their favourite badge is not so much the cloth cap as the scientist’s white coat. The Tories, too, are in on the deception. They produce tame trade unionists, and give them hopeless seats to fight at election time. They announced that their new chairman, Mr. du Cann, is an ex-grammar schoolboy. This was meant to convince us that they had a leader who had battled through the eleven plus to the sort of school which our own kids might go to. In fact, they were stretching the meaning of the term grammar school; the places where Edward Dillon Lott du Cann got his education—Colet Court and Woodbridge—represent something much more expensive than is open to the average working class child.

Thus, in many ways the dice may seem to be loaded against Sir Alec. Any mistakes he might make will be blamed onto his blue-blooded origins. Tory publicists do their best to cover up his faux-pas—his confession to doing his balance of payments sums with the aid of matches, his “little donation" speech, his half-moon glasses. They assure us that although Home may not have a great deal of political cunning, he is possessed of abundant integrity.

Those of us with longer memories, or with a thirst for the facts, will know that Home was one of the supporters of the 1938 Munich agreement, and that he needed something other than integrity when he was defending that agreement in the House. We also know that he was Secretary for Commonwealth Relations from 1955 to 1960, which means that he is firmly identified with the Suez double-cross, the Nyasaland fraud and all the other dirty deals which were pulled off during that period and subsequently, when he held higher office. In fact, one of the first things a capitalist politician must discard is his integrity.

In any case, honesty will not rescue Home. His position is insecure, there are hungry men waiting to pounce, and his party is in confusion. Amid this chaos, it is appropriate to state the facts on the leadership issue.

Leaders, whoever they are and whatever their party, exist because of the ignorance of their followers. But at the same time their actions must be confined within, and must not offend, that ignorance. At the present this does not cause any upsets because the people who are content to be led are also content to keep capitalism going.

But this means that the leaders, who often get power on promises to solve certain problems, are quite unable to keep their word. They must promise to safeguard peace at the same time as they are assiduously organising the production of weapons of war. They must promise to conquer capitalism’s economic upsets when in fact they have not the faintest idea of what to do about them.

It also means that they must cheat and lie; they must wholeheartedly engage in the ruthless game of politics. They must shake hands with their deadliest political enemy while keeping the other hand firmly on the safety catch—and while knowing that their enemy is doing the same. And all this must go on while they are professing, if they are Tories, to being a party of gentlemen, or if they are Labourites, to being the party of common humanity.

Mr. Enoch Powell, an M.P. who has the endearing habit of often blowing inconvenient gaffs which his colleagues find embarrassing in the extreme, once wrote:

. . . political purposes . . . are concerned with public opinion and the persuasion of large numbers. The politician’s business is not investigating and expounding facts for their own sake. Facts become relevant to his job only when people are ready to lake an interest in them, so that they become potential instruments of persuasion and action.

Sometimes the politicians succeed in convincing the working class that they are effective. Then they are canonised as great men. Often they fail. Then one leader is deposed, as Home may be deposed, to be replaced by another. But the essential of the situation—the repressive and degrading capitalist system- remains. The majority of people continue to be exploited and harassed and, peculiarly, to opt to stay like that.

As long as they have their leaders to show them the way into chaos, the workers are content. Home may go but the set-up which bore him and finished him will remain. The roundabout goes on and on, round and round, up and down. Only the man who is in charge of the engine changes occasionally. The sickening motion of the thing goes on, and will continue to do so until the passengers who are suffering from it all decide that they have had enough.

Ivan.

Why the date is important (1964)

From the May 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Prime Minister has spoken. In the hope that the interests of the Conservative Party will be best served by an election in the Autumn, he has settled for that and the news which has been so anxiously awaited by the M.P.s who hang on to slim majorities, and not so anxiously by those who sit on a fat lead, is out.

Ever since the Profumo crisis, there has been any amount of speculation about the timing of the election. Only a short time ago, some political experts were assuring us, on information from “reliable sources,” that polling day would definitely be in March. Others were equally confident that it would be in late May or June.

But there has also been a persistent story that the Prime Minister himself favoured a later date, in the hope that by then his party’s tarnished image would be looking a little brighter. At the same time, it was whispered, Harold Wilson was hoping for a June election and was working on the assumption that that would happen.

Both Labour and Conservative parties attach great importance to the date of the election; for some time they have based their electoral strategy on their forecast of the date.

In passing, we may comment that the time which Douglas-Home has chosen has a certain interest. Previous Conservative Premiers have often been masters at the political game and have excelled in calling elections at a time of maximum inconvenience to their opponents, and then fighting on a craftily conceived vote-catching gimmick. Baldwin was like that and so was Macmillan. But Douglas-Home has so far done nothing to suggest that his choice of polling day has been handled any more adroitly than the other political matters which he has bungled since he took office.

This is a point of no more than academic interest. While the working class are blind enough to acquiesce in a social system in which they are governed by leaders in the interests of the capitalist class, it is of little consequence whether the leaders are politically skilful or not. Home, up to now, is one of the nots.

It is important to realise why the parties have been in such a dither over polling day. The English political constitution allows the date of an election to be flexible. This would not matter very much if the people who determine the outcome of an election were of different material. In other words, if the working class were politically more mature, the election date would be of much less significance—their votes would go the same way in March as in October, or any other month.

But the working class are not politically mature. They vote in ignorance and in docile acceptance of whatever capitalism likes to dish out to them. Some of them support the Labour Party, although they oppose Labour Party policy. (Aims of Industry claim that 32 per cent. of Labour Party supporters are opposed to more nationalisation). And the same sort of thing can be said for some of the supporters of the Tory government.

If the evidence of the Gallup Poll can be relied upon, the voting intentions of the working class change almost week by week, apparently influenced by all manner of incidents in the daily round of capitalist crisis and confusion. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the politicians attach such importance to the date of an election. If, for example, Macmillan’s government had collapsed last summer, they would probably have lost the election—for the same basically illogical reason that may win the election for Douglas-Home later this year.

In the United States, the pre determined date of an election means that the timing in itself does not have the same importance as over here. But this does not mean that there is any less posturing, any less dishonesty from the politicians, any less ignorance on the part of the working class. For some months before a Presidential election, some American government business almost comes to a standstill, as the two great parties concentrate their energies on the coming campaign — upon the careful statements, the devious attacks on their opponents, the loaded hand outs and promises to voters.

This sort of campaign is widely accepted by most of the people who have a vote to cast. In the same way, they expect a British Prime Minister to choose an election date to suit himself—the date on which, he thinks, the people who are foolish enough to vote for his party will outnumber those who are foolish enough to vote for the opposition.

This sort of cynicism does not damage the politician's image of a beneficent, honest man who would rather die than stoop to a low trick. It does not damage Home's image of a chivalrous aristocrat who longs to serve all of us slum dwellers and millstone mortgagees. It will not damage Wilson’s image of the blunt, sensible lad from Yorkshire who learnt all about life in the days when he could not afford to wear shoes. Yet these images should be damaged—indeed, should be destroyed by the evidence of the politician’s cynicism. That they are not destroyed is just another symptom of the political backwardness of the voters.

One of the most depressing facts about an election is that very few of the millions who cast their votes seem to ask what the politicians want power for. They are generally content to accept the cynicism and the vote hunting and the politician's own assessment of themselves as humane and clever men.

Both Labour and Conservative parties claim that they are opposed to each other. The Labour Party warn us that the Tories are hard headed, ruthless men of business who care not for the problems of the under-privileged nor now that Harold Wilson is in command —for the underpaid men of science. The Tories reply that the Labour Party is full of reckless dogmatists who will ruin the British economy for the sake of a theory and who will allow British capitalism to be bossed by flat capped trade unionists.

What truth is there in these claims? One of the issues on which Labour hopes to win votes is the rise in rents which followed the Rent Act. The figure of the rapacious landlord has always been a politically emotive one. Yet even at the time when the Act was first passed, it was apparent that a Labour government would have been compelled, to some extent, to free rents. Now from the other side, the Conservatives have stated that they are in favour of some measure of rent control. In the House of Commons on March 18th last Sir Keith Joseph, Minister of Housing, made this quite clear: 

. . . the Government do not intend, if returned to power, to propose, during the next Parliament, any further measure of block (rent) decontrol.

This shows how close the two parties are on this issue. There is nothing surprising about this. Housing is an essential part of working class expenditure and as such has a powerful effect upon wages. This means that rents are important enough to capitalism to ensure that the two big parties substantially agree on what should be done about them.

Then there is the favourite Tory bogey of a Labour party which will nationalise everything and drive all the employees out of business. This bogey has always been something of a laugh, especially when we recall what the last Labour government was prepared to do to keep British capitalism prosperous.

Now Sir John Hunter, chairman of the Central Training Council, has had his say on this, to the British Employers' Confederation;—

I do not subscribe to the view that a Labour Government will introduce legislation with little regard for the employers' views. On the contrary, I believe a Labour Government would listen attentively to the views expressed by employers’ organisations on one condition that those views are positive and expressed clearly, forcibly and without reservation. (Guardian, 19/3/64.)

Both the big parties, in fact, stand for capitalism—and so do other organisations like the “Liberals," “Communists” and “Independents,” who claim to be different. They stand for the social system in which war is established and persistent enough to be almost a way of life. They support the economic arrangement in which the mass of the people, who make and distribute the world’s wealth, live in a horror-land of plastic, prefabricated, powdered, poverty, while a few privileged people have an income which allows them the chance to live like human beings. (In the tax year 1961/62 there were just 92 people in this country with annual incomes over £100,000).

In face of their basic agreement over the continuance of this social system, the differences between the Labour Party and its Tory opponents arc quite insignificant. They are no more than differences over the details of administering a world so organised that it enables a few people to do very well indeed while the vast majority get hurt—sometimes literally so.

This is what puts the timing of the election into its perspective. What can we say about the voter who is subject to all the suppressions and frustrations of capitalism yet who will vote Labour in March, Tory in October, perhaps Labour again in January, and so on? Is there anything more foolish? More futile?

Whatever precise date the Prime Minister eventually settles for, he can rest assured that when the election is over and the next government is comfortably in the seat of power, when the newspapers are smugly congratulating everyone on what they call the exercise of democracy, he will still be Sir Alec Douglas-Home with all his property and investments. So will the rest of his class, up the top of the social tree. And somewhere down the bottom will be the people who, at any time and in all weathers, are content to keep them there.

Ivan

Honour & Truth: Honesty in Politics (1963)

From the January 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently a small storm was raised by Mr. R. H. S. Crossman, Labour M.P. for Coventry, by an article in The Guardian in which he wrote that it is hypocrisy to condemn politicians for their lies and deceptions; the condemnation should rest on their policy itself, not on the practices which surround the policy:

  The truth is that in politics there come occasions when honourable men are bound to practice deception and tell lies, and any hypocrites will impugn their personal integrity when things go wrong and they are caught red-handed. (The Guardian, 2/11/62.)

He took to task Lord Home, who had smugly claimed that the Russian deception over the Cuba missiles “showed that the Free World could not afford to take anything from the Soviet Union on trust.” Crossman recalled that just six years earlier Eden “was trying to conceal the concerted Anglo-French-lsraeli attack on Nasser from the Americans, under a fantastic mixture of evasions, half-truths, and breaches of solemn commitments,” and among those who shared responsibility for this attempt “to deceive our American allies ” was the present Prime Minister.

Of course, government and politics are riddled with lies and deceptions, but many people hate to accept it, like the reader of The Guardian, who could hardly believe that Crossman really meant what he said: “. . . have I misunderstood? 1 have always assumed it axiomatic that honour and truth are indivisible even in politics.”

A couple of other examples of lies in politics made the news within a few weeks of Crossman's article. Mr. Sylvester, United States Assistant Secretary of Defence, admitted that news was "generated” by the American government during the Cuban crisis and “was used successfully” and that his government would continue to use “news” to further its foreign policy. “I think the inherent right of the government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic.” (Times, 8/12/62.)

The other example concerned United Nations and its late Secretary-General's statements and actions during the Congo-Katanga dispute. It cannot be doubted, said the Sunday Telegraph, 

  “that the statement issued from Leopoldsville at the time, while Hammarskjoeld himself was there, was a complete fabrication. In trying to give the impression that the fighting was merely part of an attempt to complete the expulsion of ‘mercenaries,' an imaginary story was concocted that was quite at variance with the only facts then known. . .”

(Sunday Telegraph, 18/11/62.)

The practice of public lying is so widespread that the readers of The Guardian can hardly believe that it does not exist, but he possibly does believe that it could and should be got rid of. What chance is there of this!

Speak the truth

Probably every child born into the world is told by parents, teachers and others that he or she ought to speak the truth. Certainly it is difficult to imagine any of them being told that it is their duty always to refrain from speaking the truth.

But they are also taught to be selective about it, and if not so taught, they soon discover it for themselves. They learn to dissemble, to keep their mouths shut on occasion, to put a gloss on things and generally to avoid the trouble that would ensue for them and those around them if they went about all day long blaring what they believe to be the truth. By the time they are grown up they will have found that it is a very tricky business to steer a safe course through the permitted truths and the compulsory lies. Though they will still be told by governments, employers, newspaper proprietors and church leaders that truth is sacred, they will be in trouble if, for example, as salesmen, they tell the customers what sort of rubbish it is they are selling, and that the owner of the goods simply wants their money and as much profit as possible. They will also have to realise that a passion for disclosing the truth will not save them from action for libel or slander, or from the Official Secrets Act. They will have it forcibly impressed on them that though some lies are punished as perjury, other lies are officially required of them.

In war-time the somewhat haphazard private-enterprise peace-time lying gets properly organised and conics into its own, as was entertainingly described by the late Lord Ponsonby in his Falsehood in War-time, a book published in 1928, dealing with the massive official lie- machines of the first world war. When a government decides to go to war lying to its own population about themselves and about the enemy is an important weapon of war. It helps to inflame patriotic passions and make them readier to kill and be killed. Ponsonby put on record a fascinating selection of the wartime “propaganda truths” subsequently proved to have been bareface lies and in some instances deliberate and coldblooded inventions—like the official story spread all over the world that the Germans were boiling down corpses to make lubricating oil and other products to serve the war effort. Most of the examples in the book were taken from the British and allied propaganda efforts, but Ponsonby had no illusions, he knew that war-time official lying is universal. He also knew that he could disclose these things only when the war was over. He would certainly not have been able to publish the book and get it widely circulated while the war was on.

Moreover, while war-fever was at its height most people would not have been in a fit state of mind to accept his disclosures. It was only in the somewhat more sober atmosphere after the war that they would listen. He quoted John Bright:

  You will find wars are supported by a class of argument which, after the war is over, the people find were arguments they should never have listened to.

Ponsonby also knew that “lying . . . does not take place only in war-time,” and he commented on the fact that while the habit of lying is common, man's habit of lying “is not nearly so extraordinary as his amazing readiness to believe. It is indeed, because of human credulity that lies flourish ”

This credulity is the crux of the matter. How can the suckers escape being taken in by the confidence men? How can workers break out of the confusion of the social system based on their exploitation? Knowledge and understanding are the only sure answer, together with the cultivation of a critical attitude of mind to the unceasing streams of interested sales-talk and propaganda. Cut away the trimmings, the charms and oratorical skill of the speaker, and get down to a critical examination of the argument and evidence. Don’t accept assertions and promises on some supposed infallibility attaching to the source from which they come. Above all, examine the case against the propaganda of the governments, ruling class groups, and the propertied class. They are interested parties and the interests they are concerned with are not those of the working class.

Notice that, almost unique among propaganda bodies, the SPGB has open meetings, anyone can attend our Executive Committee meetings, conferences, etc., and anyone can ask questions and claim the right to put opposition at our propaganda meetings. This is our own safeguard, and yours—that what we say is true.

Lies, suppression, distortion and secrets do not serve the interests of the workers of the world but the interests only of their exploiters.

Edgar Hardcastle

Greasy Pole: Nightmare for Tory Leaders (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

By their decisive vote the Tory membership have elected, in David Cameron, a leader who seems to be unsure about his own identity. Is the man they have chosen the same David Cameron who, perhaps trying to impress us with his fearlessly rounded personality, recalled his ballet lessons as a child? Or is he the David Cameron who quickly denied having those lessons “after checking with his mother” (although not, apparently, with his spin doctors)? Is he David Cameron speaking, at the start of his campaign, to the Centre for Social Justice (and there’s a grand name for an organisation that hardly anyone has heard of): “The biggest challenge our country faces is not economic decline, but social decline”? Or is he David Cameron three months later, when he told the assembled hacks outside Parliament: “I want us to confront the big challenge that this country faces: making sure we have a strong economy so we can generate the jobs we need . . .”? Is he David Cameron looking forward so much to being party leader: “I am very excited by it. I want to be a voice for change, for optimism and hope”? Or is he David Cameron shortly afterwards, who was asked on the Richard and Judy show if the Tory leadership would not be some kind of poisoned chalice and responded starkly “It’s a nightmare job”?

There are not a few precedents to encourage Cameron in that pessimistic – or rather realistic – assessment. At the Tory conference in 1963 it dawned on Alec Douglas-Home, then known to readers of Burke’s Peerage as the 14th Earl of Home, that he – the government’s affable gentleman amateur – was in serious danger of being uprooted from the mellow courtesies of the House of Lords and dumped, as party leader and prime minister, into the bear garden of the Commons. This was not an attractive proposition. “Oh they must find someone else” he wailed to a lobby correspondent “Even if they can’t agree on Rab (Butler) or Quintin (Hailsham) there must be someone else. But please, please, not me”. But “they” did not “find someone else” because of all the contenders for the leadership he was considered to be the one least likely to be a disaster.

And on that unpromising assumption he was pitched into battle against Harold Wilson, whose craftily cultivated Yorkshire vowels enunciated the claim that the Labour Party stood for a thrusting, technological Britain while the Tories, by the very fact of Douglas Home becoming their leader, had proclaimed their resolve to cling to a discredited past. It did Home no good that he saw himself to be a “moderniser”, charged with uniting his party after the schisms of the Macmillan years. His Party Chairman, along with many of his supporters, came to dread his efforts to compete with Wilson’s grasp of the irrelevances of capitalist economics. On some of his prime ministerial journeys abroad his wife repeatedly had to remind him of their destination for fear that he would step off the plane and use the welcoming microphones to let everyone know how delighted he was to have arrived in some other city.

Heath

Home never mastered the techniques of putting across on television the deceptions and evasions so necessary to a politician. He came across as someone whose historically privileged background prevented him having any idea of how the majority of people lived – not that the politicians who do show some such understanding are any more effective. So it was some surprise, that it was by only a small margin that Home lost his one and only election in 1964. He then largely left the job of opposing the Wilson government to his lieutenants and in July 1965, as the tide of criticism rose around him, he resigned. In 1989 a TV interviewer asked him “You never really wanted to be Prime Minister did you?” and Home replied “Terrible intrusion into one’s private life”. As he left Downing Street his party resolved that never again would their leader “emerge” as he had; in future it would be through an election. Not that it has done them much good, or made the job less of a nightmare.

The first person to gain advantage of the Tories taking their first nervous steps into any kind of internal democracy was Edward Heath. He was by then already a controversial figure in the party, partly because of his support for British membership of the European Community and partly because he had pushed through the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance, which had affected a great many small shopkeepers. In a sense unknown to Home he was a “moderniser” whose modest background was in contrast to the earl in his castle among the grouse moors. But Heath resisted any attempt by Tory propagandists to “sell” him in that way, on the grounds that to do so would be to descend to the same depths of cynicism as Wilson.

During his five years as Leader of the Opposition Heath signalled that the Tories had broken with the polices of “Butskellism” – the consensus between Labour and Tory Chancellors about economic policy. In its place the party developed plans to reform – which really meant to curb – the effectiveness of trade unions to resist any attacks on wages or working conditions. At the same time there was to be an end to government helping out “lame ducks” – propping up firms or even industries which were in difficulties. In the short term the argument ran, this may cause problems, for example to workers who lose their jobs; but in the long run the logic of profitability would ensure greater and enduring prosperity for all.

Cameron

This was also called modernising but this latest plan to solve all the problems of British capitalism did not long survive the Tory victory at the 1970 election, as it was undermined by a series of what came to be called U turns. Finally, Heath’s government was seen as a bunch of rigid blunderers who willingly reduced the country to a three day week rather than question the dogma contributing to the crisis.

By the time he lost the election in February 1974 Heath had few friends in his party and he was infamous for his unprovoked rudeness. He seemed genuinely to fail to understand why anyone could possibly resist the force of his arguments; as Douglas Hurd, who was then his Political Secretary, put it “He believed that people deserved the evidence and by god they were going to get it”. Worse was to come for him as an exasperated party deprived him of the leadership and elected Thatcher in his place, leaving Heath to moulder on the back benches, jeered by his own party when he criticised the Thatcher government and immersed in what looked very much like the comfort of a long-term sulk.

And now it is Cameron’s turn; the question is, in spite of his assurances, has anything really changed? On his way to the leadership Cameron presented himself as an architect of compassionate conservatism – as distinct, presumably, from cruel and pitiless conservatism. Well he would say that, wouldn’t he – just as all the other recent leaders – Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard – have said it, before their party went on to fight an election on policies which were anything but compassionate. Of course cadging for votes does strange things to a politician; how else can we explain Cameron’s recent yearning to give up his £1.2 million house in Notting Hill and move to Neasden. Or his inability to remember, not just whether he took Class A drugs, but whether he joined the Tory Party, when he was at Oxford. (With a memory like that, how on earth did he get a degree?)

When he said the job of Tory leader is a nightmare perhaps he had in mind, not just the experiences of the three men most recently in that job but the fact that he is the fifth Tory leader during the last eight years and that of the ten leaders starting with Churchill the majority have either been ousted or have resigned. A persistent feature of nightmares is the sensation of being out of control – something which all the politicians who profess to be able to shape capitalism to their will, perhaps to make it a compassionate social system – must know about. They may try to conceal the chaos behind a mask of confidence, until reality ensures that they wake up screaming.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Reshuffle – Who? When? Why? (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

We do not need to be diverted but recently Vernon Bogdanor, Research Professor at King’s College, shared his thoughts on the matter of David Cameron looking for a way to revive his government’s sagging fortunes: “David Cameron is an admirer of Harold Macmillan. There is quite a lot of similarity in that both went to Eton and Oxford”. And the point of this: “Like Macmillan, Cameron’s lustre is fading. He too faces grave economic problems allied to failing support in the polls and is believed to be planning to revitalise his administration with a reshuffle”. And the eminent professor’s advice: “It is important that Cameron does not let the legacy of the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ inhibit his own political calculations”. There are some key words in this passage: ‘grave economic problems;’ ‘failing support;’ ‘revitalise;’ ‘reshuffle;’ because reshuffling a government – throwing out some of its prominent members, shifting those that remain around between jobs and filling the resulting gaps with hungry cubs from the back benches – is well established political strategy, even though it has never produced an enduring remedy for any perceived problems.

Attlee

The Night of the Long Knives was the occasion in 1934 when the Nazis protected their recently won victory by wiping out a clutch of restless brutes in their paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung, including its leader Ernst Roehm. Bogdanor was warning Cameron against employing rather less bloody but nevertheless markedly ruthless methods familiar to political leaders in this country. An example is provided by Clement Attlee, the first post-war Prime Minister, who rode to power on a great wave of underestimation in his party. “And a little mouse will lead them” was how Hugh Dalton, Attlee’s future Chancellor of the Exchequer, had greeted his rise in 1935 to the Labour leadership. In fact, the little mouse in Number Ten was quick to sack Dalton when he unwisely leaked some minor detail of his 1947 Budget to a crafty reporter. “Perfect ass,” was how Attlee dismissed Dalton, “His trouble was that he liked to talk, and he always liked to have a secret to confide”. Little more was heard of Dalton and his ambitions to lead his party. Another of Attlee’s ministers (who resigned but was never sacked by him) described his style as ". . . the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match”. But that idyllic vision was not apparent to John Belcher, junior minister at the Board of Trade, who was caught out taking what were regarded as bribes (but which would hardly rate as such in the present state of politics) for fixing governmental favours. Belcher was found to have accepted a suit, a cigarette case, a holiday in Margate (yes, Margate) from a fraudster and undischarged bankrupt. Attlee sacked him on the spot and launched a searching enquiry into the matter.

Abrasive

The wife of another ambitious minnow was furious when her husband was called to Number Ten in expectation of a glamorous promotion only to be told to clear his desk, but that meanwhile as he had an engineering qualification he might have a look at the troublesome family vacuum cleaner.  Another hopeful, John Parker, was similarly disappointed but did not help his case by gasping, “But why, Prime Minister?” which drew the barb: “Afraid you’re not up to it”. Behind Attlee and his abrasive style were some unusually powerful government figures such as Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps and Herbert Morrison whose experience of running affairs during the war did not make them any more humane, or successful, in controlling the inherent aggressiveness of the system. Among their priorities was the conscription of those hopeful people, to forget the promises for the safer, freer world which was to be built from the terror and destruction of 1939-45 and go to fight for the interests of British capitalism in Korea, Kenya, Cyprus . . .

Macmillan

It was one such conflict – the disastrous invasion of Suez in 1956 – that effectively raised Harold Macmillan to the position of Prime Minister. This was the time when, we were told, we had “never had it so good” such that a Tory election win in 1959 brought about the reign of somebody known as Supermac. But then came the predictable decline as the economy entered a less easy spell, raising questions about Macmillan’s durability. In America, the election of the youthfully virile JFK made the Tories seem older and more frail. Then came the crucial blow, when the safe seat of Orpington in Kent was lost to the Liberal Party in a by-election. Nothing could be more calculated to stimulate subversive restlessness among the back benches and there were insistent calls for Supermac to stand down. Although Macmillan nourished the reputation of a Gentleman To His Fingertips (Eton, Balliol, Grenadier Guards), he decided to be so ungentlemanly as to pin the blame for the rampant chaos onto his ministers, in particular his long-standing friend and enduringly loyal and willing Chancellor of the Exchequer, Selwyn Lloyd. He plotted a reshuffle but this was hastened by a leak in the Daily Mail, so it was necessary to call Lloyd to Number Ten to tell him he was to be sacked (Macmillan preferred “replaced”). On the following day another six members of the Cabinet were fired, then nine junior ministers. Surprisingly the Tory Party rode out the expected storm and Macmillan, resigning through health problems, was allowed to influence the choice of his successor .

Douglas Home

This was the aristocratic Old Etonian land owner Alec Douglas Home who fulfilled all expectations  by being unable to make any headway against the day-to-day pressures of capitalist politics and lost the 1964 election to Harold Wilson, the ex-grammar schoolboy with the thick Yorkshire accent. It was an instructive, if unedifying, episode. So now, almost fifty years after Macmillan and his Long Knives and seventy years after Attlee and his ruthless cosh, can it be that our “progress” is so meagre that it must be measured by an eminent professor speculating about the application of some stale, infected poultice to the chronic ulcers of capitalist society and its politicians? Those who claim to instruct us seem to be unaware that Cameron and his like offer nothing different or more searching or hopeful than a harking back to their own dismal failures. This is, simply, not the best we humans can do and the urgency for us is to demand better for ourselves as a revolutionary class.

Ivan

News in Review: The Labour Party and the Queen's Navee (1964)

The News in Review column from the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The Labour Party and the Queen's Navee

Well, in the end Mr. Wilson was able to force the Prime Minister to withdraw his allegation that the Labour leader wanted to give the Royal Navy to the United Nations which presumably made somebody, somewhere, happy.

Mr. Wilson, we may assume, loves the Navy, which is natural enough because after all perhaps no part of the British armed forces has done so much to set wider still and wider bounds of the glorious British Empire on which, once, the sun never set.

Nor was it only in the House of Commons that the Labour Party were standing up for Jolly Jack Tar. The Tory government had hatched a wicked plot to abolish the name Admiralty and to substitute the name Navy Board which as everyone knows does not summon up the vision of a blue cocked hat half as well. The government put this plot into a Bill and they pushed it through the Commons but the House of Lords was a different matter.

The Tory peers woke up when they realised what the government was up to because they thought that this was mucking about with tradition (one of them spoke about “a religious intensity”) and that when Jolly Jack Tar’s head is stuffed full of a lot of nonsense about tradition he obeys his officers more readily and is keener to die for what he thinks is his country.

Labour peers were awake too. Lord Alexander said: “Admiralty . . .  is something a little more majestic, something which . . . has left a lasting world impression" and Earl Attlee, waspish as ever, hoisted his own battle signal: “I believe in preserving things with great traditions".

Thus encouraged, the original Tory objector divided the House and Labour and Tory peers steamed in irresistible convoy into the same lobby to defeat the government by eight votes. The torpedoed government agreed to the amendment and the Commons, chastened by the Upper House’s greater reverence for the traditions of British arms, relented too. We still, therefore, call it the Admiralty.

Any Jolly Jack Tar who in future may be blown up, or drowned, or otherwise killed, in the interests of the British ruling class can take consolation from the fact that he dies under the organisation of something called the Admiralty and not something with a non-traditional name like the Navy Board and that this is all thanks to the united efforts of Tory peers and of Labour peers who, although they call themselves Socialists, were ready to fire a broadside for the glorious, blood-soaked traditions of the Queen’s Navee.

Abroad

Primaries in the States

Presidential primary elections, which were introduced into the United States about the turn of the century, were designed to prevent the big party machines foisting their own candidates onto the American electorate. The method of the elections varies widely from state to state but in all of them the voters get a chance to say, in one way or another, who they would like to see standing for President.

In fact, the men who eventually fight it out are usually those who would probably have been nominated if the primary elections had never been held. Although the candidates are formally picked at the party conventions, the men who do the picking in the smoke-filled rooms necessarily take the popular will into account, whether or not this has been sampled in the primaries.

Thus although Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in 1960 after fighting some classical political campaigns in primaries, in which he convinced his party that he was a vote winner, Stevenson got the nomination in 1952 without entering a single primary.

The conventions choose the man they think most likely to win the election. This year, it is as certain as anything can be that the Democrats will make a formality of confirming President Johnson as their man. For the Republicans, however, the choice is more complicated.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who flexed his political muscles in the last election when he virtually compelled Nixon to modify his platform, is a candidate who has lost some popular support because of his recent divorce—as if that affects his ability to run a great capitalist country. Senator Goldwater, who has expressed ideas so out of tune with the contemporary needs of American capitalism that it is hard to believe that if he gets the nomination he will not modify them, was strongly fancied until the accession of Johnson rallied Democratic support in the South, where Goldwater was once reported to be making inroads.

Neither of these men, at the moment, seems likely to satisfy every Republican yearning for a candidate to take them on a glorious bandwagon to the White House next November. There are others waiting to take advantage of a possible deadlock; Governors Romney and Scranton, and plain Mr. Richard Nixon, who still sourly protests that he has had enough of electoral disappointment.

Whoever the two parties pick, it is sure that their running mates for the post of Vice-President will be a vote-catching compromise, in the same way that Johnson’s Southern origin and mature political skill was designed to offset Kennedy's youthful, Northern “liberalism.”

This is how the great American political parties, just like their counterparts over here, defer to the political ignorance of the working class voters—which is what they must do of they are to have a hope of winning. And what, in the end, comes out of it all?

On November 3rd, the American working class will go to the polls to decide who will run capitalism in their country over the next four years. The result will not appreciably alter the conditions of the millions who cast their vote. Like Peter Simple’s Marshal Bolster, we can confidently say that whoever gets the most votes will win. But, unlike Bolster, we can also confidently say that whoever this is, it will not matter a damn.

Politics

Translation of Sir Alec

Like Bottom, Sir Alec Douglas-Home is translated—and sometimes he could almost be wearing an ass’s head, to boot.

Before he became Prime Minister, Home's image was that of an amiable, unfussy, courteous aristocrat who took to politics only because of a desire to serve us of the lower orders by being one of our political, as well as one of our economic, masters.

For somebody who owns as much as Home does that must have been a pleasant pretension. But his promotion has changed all that. The courteous aristocrat is now trying to be the tricky, funny politician.

Home has grown famous for the facetious cracks with which he evades Opposition questions in the House of Commons. (The Daily Telegraph reports these cracks as priceless gems of humour but surely even the Tories will grow tired of them?) And he has recently earned more infamy by his remarkably ill-judged attack on Harold Wilson over the latter’s alleged desire to give away the Royal Navy and by his statement that when he was ready to debate Wilson on television he would “send for” the Labour leader.

This last crack, with its implication that politicians tell the TV men what to put on, and when, upset some sections of the press and within a couple of days of each other both The Guardian and the Observer had a go at Home, warning him that in his present vein he is more likely to lose votes than to win them.

Poor Sir Alec is only doing his best and perhaps he is pleasing the Tory faithful. Doubtless, if he thought for a moment that he was losing votes he would change his line overnight.

For like all capitalist politicians the Prime Minister must know that truth and consistency are not particularly important in the great vote hunt. It may be ironical that the leader of the Gentleman’s Party, and the recent holder of an ancient title of chivalry, should descend to such methods but that, after all, is all part of the dirty game of politics.

And anyway it usually goes over with the voters. Bottom in his ass’s head was irresistible to Titania after she had been dealt a drug. At times it seems that the working class, infatuated as they are with their leaders, must themselves be under the influence of a love potion.

Business

Threat from Japan

Part of the official propaganda campaign during the last war was aimed at convincing us that the Japanese were a lot of little yellow monkeys who committed some fearful atrocities.

There was, of course, a lot of truth in the atrocity stories. But what the Allied propaganda did not publicise was the fact that the war was not being fought to stop the Japanese maltreating their prisoners.

Japan is one of the world’s great trading nations, with an economy which must export to live. In this, she is similar to Great Britain; both countries in the past were driven by their economic needs into an imperialist policy. Both, too, in their adventures to find and to hold on to foreign markets, built up powerful armed forces.

When the last war started, Japan was a monster competitor in the Far East, such as Commodore Perry could not have dreamt he was unleashing when in 1853 he first tried to open the country as a market for American exports. It was to tame the monster which Perry had all unknowingly awoken that the last war in the Far East was fought.

Since 1945 the Japanese capitalists have been progressively recovering from their defeat; although in this nuclear age they are no longer a great military power, their trade offensives are as forceful as ever. Japan is the world's greatest shipbuilding nation. Its cheap cameras, transistor radios, motor cycles and so on flood into the markets of the world. It has beaten its rivals out of one market after another in the Far East. It dominates the economy of South East Asia, exports heavily to North America ($1,750 million worth in 1963) and Europe ($880 million), and is busily expanding into Africa ($460 million).

Japan is an important trading partner to South Africa, with which she is currently running a trade deficit (1963 exports $80 million, imports $110 million). This has had an amusing political side- effect; rather than offend the Japanese trade representatives by subjecting them to the humiliations of racial discrimination, the South African government has decided that the Japanese are actually Europeans—which shows how flexible racial theories can become under the pressure of economic interests.

What all this adds up to is that Japan, despite her military defeat, is still a powerful competitor in world capitalism. At the moment the situation seems to be under control. But who, remembering Manchuria, and China, and Pearl Harbour and finally Hiroshima, would dare to say that it will remain so?

News in Review: Freedom Riders (1961)

The News in Review column from the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Freedom Riders

Nobody need be surprised at the reception which was given to the Freedom Riders in Alabama. Race hatred, with its violent undertones, still festers in The Deep South. When we remember this, the 'sit in' victories seem to have been too easy.

Neither should we wonder at the brutality of the Montgomery mob. Colour bars cannot be justified by scientific argument, because there is no evidence to support them. Violence is simply a substitute for reason. Here is fertile ground for the ignorant, vicious mobster to flourish unhealthily.

We should remember that many of the Southerners who are fighting so hard to keep the Negro down also fought not so long ago in a war which, we were told, was for racial freedom.

We can see now what that assurance was worth. Racial freedom cannot be safeguarded by the military victory of one capitalist state over another. It depends upon the ideas of human beings.

Capitalism, with its anomalies and insecurity, breeds many brutal and inhuman ideas. Race hatred is one of them. The Freedom Riders are tackling something which may be bigger than they think.


Kennedy calls

President Kennedy is certainly mobile. His top level visits showed that, after the years of dispute, the American capitalist class still concern themselves deeply with European affairs.

Even after the wars which were supposed to eliminate them, there are still enough conflicts of interest in Europe to start another international blood bath. There is no reason to think that a third world war need begin anywhere else.

Kennedy did not see Macmillan until after his important talks with de Gaulle and Khruschev. Was he reporting on what had been decided, whether Macmillan liked it or not? Was his call at London merely a face-saver for British capitalism?

Certainly, it showed that the days are gone when Britain's gunboat word was law and that international capitalism has new bosses to sort out its problems.

Do summit talks help in this? Experience says no. Eisenhower was one of the latest of the exponents of top man-to-top man chats, but when he left office the world was as far from a secure peace as ever.

In truth the representatives of the ruling class rarely, if ever, talk peace. They talk commerce, strategy, compromise; sometimes threats. Sometimes war. If Kennedy can be taught anything in this, he is probably learning fast


Lord Home in Portugal

Lord Home; according to the people who know him, is a most charming and amiable fellow. A master, perhaps, of tact. An expert at disguising any inner feelings which may embarrass his host. Just the chap, in fact, to send out to be chummy with a dictator.

Lord Home must have needed all of his resource during his Portuguese visit. If at any time he touched on the massacres in Angola, it was doubtless with the greatest of delicacy.

There is no reason to get het up about this. The Foreign Secretary did not go to Portugal to discuss ways of expanding democracy. He went to talk about the usual things: economic interests, strategic zones and bases, exchanges of weapons and so on.

These are the real interests of the nations of capitalism. Beside them, high flown concepts like democracy are insignificant. True, some governments—like the British—profess a deep concern for freedom. But their actions expose their hypocrisy.

Diplomats are the administrators of this hypocrisy. We may sometimes wonder at their cynicism, but we would be wrong to blame them for the faults of an entire social system. Nobody should support capitalism with one hand, and hold up the other in horror at its brutality and suppression.


Stick to your business

Mr. Walter Padley, President of U.S.D.A.W., made the headlines recently for his statement at the Bournemouth Conference of his Union. “Passionate speech brings triumph to Mr. Padley'’ they said.

Was his passion for a £1 a week rise, or for shorter hours? No, he was pleading the cause of the Leader of the Labour Party—of which he is an M.P.—in opposition to the Unilateralists.

The conference spent a whole day discussing Unilateralism. What has this got to do with Trade Unions? Trade Unions were formed long before the Labour Party, with the definite object of fighting encroachments on their members' conditions of work and standard of living by the Capitalist Class, not to solve the problems of a Capitalist Party like the Labour Party. Although the prime aim of the Trade Unions when they formed the Labour Party was to get representatives in Parliament, we now find the tail wagging the dog.

In our view, the sooner the dog has a tail amputation the better. Then perhaps Trade Unions will discuss at Conferences what they are really there for.


New Cunarder

This month, the invitations to tender for the contract to build a replacement for the Queen Mary will go out to the shipbuilders.

There seems to be little prospect that the new Cunarder will be very profitable. The government are sinking £18 million in the venture to keep British shipowners in the scramble for the transatlantic sea traveller.

Cunard argue that the best way of doing this, and of boosting British prestige, is to build a 75,000 tonner. Other shipping companies have their doubts about this.

Some workers may object to the government’s subsidy because they think that it comes out of the income tax and other taxes which they grumble about so much.

Let us set that one at rest. However much the State takes from a worker's wage packet—and however much they leave in it—he still receives, on average, about enough to live on.

The burden of taxation is borne by the capitalist class, which is as it should be. They can afford taxes, and it is their State machine.

The attitudes which the political parties have struck about the new Cunarder may cause some surprise. Why should the Tories be justifying a State subsidy for such an eminent private enterprise? Should not Labour be pleased that the government is helping to build a British prestige winner, and giving work to depressed shipyards to boot?

This is not the first time the requirements of capitalism have persuaded political parties to abandon what they call their principals.


A New Market For Russia

The involvement of the Russian bloc in Cuban affairs must be seen in the context of their desire to penetrate a Latin American economy which hitherto had been the exclusive preserve of Western Capitalism. But even with their huge increase in commerce with Cuba itself, their share in Latin American exports and imports last year was still only about 2 per cent of the area’s total trade, as against 47 per cent for the United States and 29 per cent for Western Europe. However, Russia has embarrassingly large exportable surpluses of petroleum and her highly industrialised satellites, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, urgently require outlets for manufactured goods and capital equipment. Meanwhile within Russia there is a growing demand for foodstuffs such as sugar, coffee, beef and bananas.

Most Latin American countries are utterly dependent upon the export of one or two main crops or raw materials only. Yet it is just these commodities that have suffered a prolonged decline in price in recent years bringing about a continent wide economic crisis. An important factor contributing towards this decline has been the hardening of U.S. tariffs against so many of the products that she herself produces. An even more significant factor, perhaps, has been the increasing competition from the emergent African states and Portuguese colonies. Because of their closer ties with Africa and the somewhat shorter distances for freight the Common Market has many advantages in further developing trade with Africa. We can expect, therefore, that Russian capitalism will seek to profit from this situation with increasing vigour and success.

The Passing Show: Misrepresentation (1959)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Misrepresentation

Recently Lord Birdwood protested in the House of Lords about “misrepresentations of conditions in Britain which, he said, had followed an interchange of journalists with Czechoslovakia last year ” (Manchester Guardian, 11 / 2/59). One Czech newspaper, said Lord Birdwood, “carried a report of a bearded beggar, covered by a tarpaulin and with his feet in a paper sack, who lay asleep in Hyde Park ‘not far from glittering Piccadilly.’ This was intended to indicate that Britain could not maintain work and homes for all its citizens.”

False information

Lord Home replied for the Government and defended the interchange. We had to accept, he said, “that there was a risk that journalists in Communist countries might toe the party line and produce the kind of misrepresentation of which Lord Birdwood had given examples.” There is no doubt, he lamented, “that from time to time we will find people coming here from other countries and reporting false information.”

The Czech newspapers, of course, would be very glad to tell their readers how badly off the British people were, in order to take their minds off the conditions which they have to endure under Czech capitalism. But to return to Lord Birdwood’s protest about misrepresentation.

Mutual admiration society

It is not recorded that any of the other peers expressed surprise at this Birdwood-Home duet. Augustine Birrell once said that the House of Lords represent nobody but themselves, and they enjoy the full confidence of their constituents. On this kind of performance, they certainly have little claim to the confidence of anyone else. For on the very same day as Lords Birdwood and Home were being indignant about foreign journalists suggesting that “Britain could not maintain work for its citizens,” in the House of Commons (whose members have to be elected, and therefore must maintain some kind of contact with the real world), the Minister of Labour was announcing that six hundred and twenty thousand of the citizens of Britain were unemployed. This means that six hundred and twenty thousand workers in this country are being denied by capitalism the chance to be of use to society, that hundreds of thousands of families are living on the dole and going short perhaps of those very things which the father of the family is not allowed to make because no one will get a profit out of it. Presumably Lord Birdwood hasn't heard about these 620,000 unemployed now drawing the dole. None of them, it is safe to say, belong to the House of Lords; nor do Lords Birdwood and Home have to remember their votes at the General Election—however baseless their statements are, the noble lords are in the happy position of knowing that at the General Election they will be returned to Parliament without the vulgar necessity of being voted for.

Housing

And what about the other part of the complaint? Surely that is justified? For the Tories make a great boast of their treatment of the housing situation. Since they took office each responsible Minister had been beating his chest about his successes in housing the people: foundation-stones have been laid, ceremonial openings performed, and our ears filled with torrents of speeches about how lucky the workers are to be having so much done for them.

And the facts? For BBC television, Robert Reid investigated the housing situation in Glasgow seven years ago, when the Conservatives had just been returned to power. There were then 100,000 applicants on the town’s housing list. Last month he returned to Glasgow to estimate progress. The number now on the housing list? 126.000.

But despite these facts, it is “misrepresentation” and “false information” according to Lords Birdwood and Home—to say that Britain cannot maintain work and homes for her people.

How comforting it must be not to know the facts of life under our social system! How fine to be able to assume that because you have a home and a solid income, everyone else has too! In short, how lovely to be a Lord!

The pot speaks up

You don’t have to be a baron to know nothing about what goes on. You can be quite ignorant even if you’re only a knight.

Sir Hugh Foot, Governor of Cyprus, commenting the other day on the Eoka truce, said: “ There will be no bargaining with violence” (Manchester Guardian, 14/1/59). No bargaining with violence! If there was no bargaining with violence, there would be no politics at all. For violence—that is war and armed conflict—is only the “continuation of politics by other means,” as Clausewitz put it. Sir Hugh may have forgotten, but the country on whose behalf he rules over Cyprus not only doesn’t condemn violence as a means of solving capitalism’s problems —it has actually engaged in two colossally destructive wars on a world-wide scale within the last half-century, and is now arming so that it will not be left out if a third one begins. Sir Hugh raised no voice against the violence used by Britain in the second world war, which included dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a joint death roll admitted by the Allies to be at least 120,000. Sir Hugh reserves his condemnation of violence for the agents of the would-be Cypriot ruling class, when they use the same methods—killing and destroying—which all the capitalist powers have used to further their ends in every war they have ever engaged in. This does not justify Eoka: but a British Governor can no more complain about the violence of others than one iceberg can complain how chilly the other icebergs are.

When only the best will do

Many of the goods which crowd the shop-windows are only shoddy stuff, botched-up to sell at the cheapest price and yield the highest profit. But a Johannesburg reader sends me a cutting revealing that at least one article designed for the workers’ consumption is made to the highest specifications. The item was in the Johannesburg Star (30/12/58):-

  "Rubber batons, designed and made in the Union, will gradually replace wooden batons in the police.
   "An order for 1,000 rubber batons, which have been approved by the Bureau of Standards, has been placed with a large rubber concern."

So any unemployed South African worker, tenderly feeling his head after the dispersal of demonstrations, can comfort himself by reflecting that the lump upon it has been raised by a precision-made instrument of the first quality, and that the throb in his temples carries with it the full approval of the Bureau of Standards.

Alwyn Edgar.