When Labour Rules (1995)

From the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

People in Britain haven't seen a Labour government since 
1979. Which means that those under 30 have had no direct
 adult experience of how Labour rule is no different from that
 of any other government. But workers in other countries
have experienced Labour governments more recently, in 
Australia and in New Zealand. Here a Socialist from Australia sets out the pro-capitalist record of the various Labor
Party governments which have been in power there since
 1983. It will make edifying reading for those who entertain 
illusions about what a Labour government in Britain would,
 or could, do. Next month a Socialist from New Zealand
 writes about how the Labour Party there imposed austerity while in office.

December 1972 saw Gough Whitlam become the first Labor PM since 1949. His term was notable for his appointment of his “old mate”, High Court judge John Kerr, as Governor-General. Kerr had already demonstrated where his sympathies lay by clapping a prominent union official in jail for industrial action against the bosses. Kerr used this newly-acquired power and imperial boot to kick Whitlam out of office and invite Liberal Malcolm Fraser to form a government in his place.

The next seven years were marked by Fraser’s austere treatment of workers and his famous explanation that “life wasn’t meant to be easy”. These polices eventually resulted in economic turmoil as increasing unrest and industrial action by the unions, let by ACTU President Bob Hawke, threatened to create chaos for the business section. Drastic action was needed to somehow curb wages and yet pacify the workers during those times of rampant inflation. Only a Labor government with control over the unions could possibly achieve this.

ACTU President Hawke, a Rhodes Scholar and son of a religious minister, suddenly became an elected Labour MP while the media, on behalf of the business world, clamoured for a Labour victory at the next election.

Bill Hayden, Labor leader at this time, was all set to become PM. Unfortunately for him this was the era of charismatic leaders with stimulating TV media appeal. Bill Hayden had a sterile character compared to Hawke, so the latter was soon rapidly elevated and replaced Hayden as Labor leader with just five weeks to go to election day. This move clinched the election TV media battle against the positively morose Malcolm Fraser. The Hawke Labor government came to power 5 March 1983. Thus commenced the Hawke and Treasurer Keating Labor saga.

Bill Hayden was clearly bitter at having to resign in favour of Hawke. He had been a leading proponent breaking all ties with the UK and declaring Australia a republic. As a reward for his “sacrifice”, apart from his fat redundancy package, Hayden also accepted the appointment of Governor-General . . . the Queen’s Representative. To this day he still ponces around in top hat, tails and sashes, with a huge tax-free salary.

The 1980s saw Labor governments almost monopolise Australia. At one period all State governments, except Queensland and Tasmania, were Labor controlled.

The new PM Hawkc quickly organisd a meeting of capitalist employers and unions to thrash out an arrangement known as “The Accord”. His recent connections in the ACTU ensured that the unions were little more than a branch of die Labor Party. Frantic for Labor success, docile union representatives agreed to everything the Hawke government suggested. The result of “Accord” was a wage freeze and a trail of broken election promises. There was an about-face on the Timor occupation by Indonesia, uranium mining, wages and taxation. Later, promises on shorter hours, better conditions, the bomb, housing, big business tax evasion and reducing poverty were also postponed. “Indefinitely”. Had the Fraser Liberal government initiated such moves industrial actions would have brought the country' to a standstill. Union officials now spent most of their time hob-nobbing with bosses and politicians and pacifying rank-and-file complaints.

PM I Hawke explained his broken promises: "Circumstances have changed. It would be the height of irresponsibility for the government to fail to adapt to changed circumstances."

By November 1984 more workers were below the poverty line than in the previous two years, and pensions fell even further below the increasing cost of living. During one of his “publicity strolls” Bob Hawke was approached by a pensioner who attempted to discuss how Labor’s policies were hurting him. He was rebuffed in front of the TV cameras by the PM who, pushing him aside, said “You silly old bugger.”

The Federal Treasurer, Paul Keating, proudly told die House of Representatives that profits, as a proportion of national income, were at their highest since 1973.

The mid-1980s produced a balance-of-payments problem. Treasurer Keating explained that the strong economy meant money was being spent on imports which far outweighed exports. His “Labor” remedy was to copy exactly Conservative Thatcher in the UK, make money too expensive to borrow to spend on imports. Interest rates rose to record levels and mortgage-payers were punished to the point of destitution, while the Hawke government imported two airliners at $300 million each for Qantas and spent vast amounts on imported fighter aircraft to upgrade the RAAF. The West Australian newspaper reported:

"Mortgages plunge young families into poverty. In two years Apr. 84 to Apr. 86 interest rales increased from 11.5 to 15.5% Average earnings during the same period increased by 12.8% before tax, consumer prices rose 15%.

Marriage break-ups and unemployment mean 81,000 children in W.A. are in families receiving some form of Govt assistance. Financial help in Australia is less than in other Western countries. The long term looks bleak. ”

With rising unemployment, the same newspaper later informed readers:

"Indexation rises in pensions for aged and invalids, dole for people over 21 and benefits for parents are planned to be curbed, saving the government S150 million p.a. and another $25 million if extended to war veterans pensions. ”

September 11 1986 and PM Hawke breaks yet another election promise. Australia will now sell uranium to France; “They can be trusted to use it only for peaceful purposes,” he said.

French nuclear testing at Mururoa in the Pacific had damaged the volcanic base of the atoll. Future French tests were now planned to take place on the Kerguelen Islands. Prevailing winds and sea currents would carry any radio-active leaks straight to Western Australia. Three leaks from other French nuclear plants were reported within the following year.

With most rank-and-file unions still being subservient and acting as a wing of the Labor Party, “restructuring” and “productivity agreements” were foisted upon workers. An exception was the Air Pilots Federation. A salary dispute led to strike action by airline pilots. The Hawke Labor government quickly intervened. RAAF pilots were used and $100 million of revenue was spent attracting foreign pilots while all the striking pilots were sacked and their Federation destroyed.

Worse off

The second half of the 1980s became “payoff time” for many Labor politicians. During these years many of them resigned from politics and took advantage of generous pay-outs and lucrative job offers from the contacts they had made during their tenure. Examples include Susan Ryan, after 12 years’ service, resigned with 60 percent of her salary for life plus a top job with Penguin Books. Mick Young was another, after many indiscreet “stuff-ups” he resigned after evading smuggling charges. On top of his ministerial lump-sum pay-out he was fixed up as a part-time consultant to Qantas with a salary of $150,000 p.a.

There were the years that the Hawke government interest in privatisation came to the fore, yet again following the path already taken by the UK Conservative “Iron Lady”. Clyde Cameron, former minister in the Whitlam government, accused Hawke of going back on all his principles from his ACTU days. Cameron called for Hawke’s expulsion from the Labor Party.

Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, in Indonesia for trade talks, was seen on TV sipping wine with his hosts while in Timor civilians were being massacred by occupying Indonesian troops.

Labor Senator Graeme Richardson, on a visit to the USA was heard on the radio delivering a speech to American capitalists. He proudly stated that the Hawke government had managed to reduce real wages by 16 percent and he invited American investment in Australia “to take advantage of the cheap labour that we have created. "

The West Australian, 25 February' 1987 reported:

“Young Australian couples are worse off than their parents were. Easy credit and women bringing in a second income have concealed the extent to which living standards have fallen. Even adjusting for inflation, a man must work harder and longer than his father did to house, feed, clothe and educate his children and pay for the necessities of family life.

A woman whose husband is in a job comparable with that of her father, and who wishes to be a full-time home-maker and mother, is likely to face financial destitution. For the past too decades married women have been under increasing financial and social pressure to return to full-time work.

Today’s young couple is likely to be a two-income family, not just until the first child, but for the greater part of their married life. The chances of their marriage failing is at least three times greater than their parents. The labour of two people today earns far less than twice what was acquired through the paid labour of one man a generation ago. ”

The recession hit the stock market. Fortunes were lost as the value of shares and property plummeted. Small investors lost most, or all, of their money while many of the individual “high-flying” corporate tycoons, suddenly now having debts more than the value of their total assets, declared themselves bankrupt, but still mysteriously managed to live in personal luxury.

Federal and State Labor governments now stated they could no longer afford to protect the environment. All charities stated poverty was increasing. Aboriginal poverty remained, as always, a growth industry managed by a multitude of government bureaucrats and civil servants. The Dept of Social Security now expanded rapidly to manage the poverty of the growing number of unemployed.

The 1980s ended with judges and politicians awarding themselves a 20 percent salary increase.

The Spring of 1990 saw the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in Turkey. PM Hawke and other Australian dignitaries journeyed to Anzac Cove where so many young Australians and New Zealanders had uselessly lost their lives in 1915. In an emotional speech, complete with choking voice and tears. Bob Hawke pledged that, “Never again will young Australians be sent to fight and die in wars abroad.” Within a year the Gulf crisis erupted and the Hawke government was the first to support American military' action by sending three warships to fight . . . before the UN had decided what action should be taken.

Back-slapping buddies

The year 1991 at Federal level witnessed the demise of that great I.abor “team” of bosom back-slapping buddies, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The facade of mutual admiration gave way as personal egos and ambition revealed their true relationship . . .  complete with knives protruding from their backs.

Paul Keating made his first challenge for leadership in June, which resulted in failure. He stepped down as Treasurer and was forced to take his exceptional talents to the backbench were he concentrated on accumulating the numbers to support another overthrow attempt and await his opportunity.

The fall of the Labor State government in Western Australia created tremors in the Federal I.abor government. Something was needed to avert the defeat they, themselves, were heading for. A change of leadership was worth a gamble so in December Hawke received a Xmas present by being ousted and replaced by his bitter rival, Paul Keating.

A resentful Bob Hawke resigned and retreated to his millionaire’s mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour and proceeded to write a book of memoirs and criticism of all his colleagues.

While these political somersaults were being enacted, privatisation and restructuring were biting the workforce. Many jobs in the railways and other government departments were made redundant and private contracts were tendered. Cuts in funding for schools, hospitals and roads were made. The Royal Flying Doctor had to appeal to charities for a new aircraft. The Federal Labor government spent $5 billion on six new submarines and vast sums re-equipping the RAAF.

G. Ogglesworth

Letter: War, Conscription and the Workers (1941)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (C.A.C., Southend) says that he has heard members of the S.P.G.B. express the opinion that the workers willingly take part in war. He asks why, then, it is necessary to have conscription.

To what extent the workers are willing to support war and all the suffering it involves is and must be a matter of opinion, since there are no means of finding out what all of them think on the subject. Judging by the results at by-elections last year where there were anti-war candidates, the great majority would appear to be in favour of the war.

The question of conscription raises other issues. The fact that conscription is applied does not necessarily mean that the majority are opposed to war. It is possible to have a majority who are themselves willing supporters but who resent the possibility that the minority may escape. They therefore favour the imposition of conscription in order to put the minority in the same position as themselves. During the last war the reverse arose. While conscription was imposed in Great Britain it was not imposed in Australia, and when a plebiscite was taken on the question a majority of Australian soldiers who were themselves serving in the army as volunteers voted against the imposition of conscription in Australia. Their view was reported to be that they preferred to have with them men who were volunteers rather than men who, as conscripts, might be less reliable soldiers.

Editorial Committee

Material World: Stolen Children (2021)

The Material World column from the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines genocide to include: ‘…e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’

As early as Australia’s Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act of 1869, legislation allowed the removal of Aboriginal people of mixed descent to force them to assimilate into white society. Up to the 1970s, in Australia, thousands of ‘mixed-race’ children were stolen from their mothers by welfare officials. The children were given to institutions as cheap or slave labour, and many were abused. Described as ‘breeding out the colour’, the policy was known as assimilation. In 1997 a landmark report, Bringing Them Home, disclosed that as many 50,000 children and their mothers had endured ‘the humiliation, the degradation and sheer brutality of the act of forced separation… the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state’. The report called this ‘genocide’.

The violence against indigenous peoples around the world is truly shocking. It has been a story of stolen lands and of stolen children.

From the nineteenth century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. And it was justified by the settler-colonialists as humanitarian and for the child’s own good. Far from being protected, indigenous children were regularly victims of abuse. Indigenous children were taken from their families, often by force. They were housed in crowded, state-funded, church-run facilities, where they were abused and forbidden from speaking their languages or participating in any form of cultural practice or activity, and forced to adopt new names and identities. Many of these children were informed that their families had either given them up or had died. To increase the success of removal policies, the authorities would often send the children vast distances from their families and friends.

The system’s purpose: ‘To kill the Indian in the child’. Children in native residential schools were wards of the federal government and consequently came under the responsibility of various religious communities. ‘The use of the word school is a misnomer,’ said Cindy Blackstock, a professor at Montreal’s McGill University and the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. ‘They were prison camps.’ (tinyurl.com/ychmpdxs)

Intimidation and fear were the teaching tools used to ensure children could not practise their customs and traditions, cutting off any bond to their history.

Conditions were consistently horrendous and distressing, leaving emotional scars on most. Thousands of children taken to the ’schools’ died of disease and other causes. We are only now discovering that many were buried in unmarked graves, to be forgotten as easily as they were neglected.

The Canadian Federal government formally apologised for the policy and abuses in 2008 which its Truth and Reconciliation Commission called ‘cultural genocide.’

The churches also apologised for their roles in the abuse. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by churches. One, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate which ran the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1890 until 1969, apologised for what it called the cultural and religious ‘imperialism’ that motivated residential schools, the disruption of families and communities that resulted, and instances of physical and sexual abuse that occurred. At the time, it made no mention of the 215 unmarked graves found at the site, and now admit that they are unable to explain their official records of only 50 deceased children. So it appears to any reasonable observer that the true death rates were being covered up.

Indian Boarding Schools had also been established in the United States with the objective of ‘civilising’ Native American children. The current US Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, has directed her department to ‘uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences’ of the ‘dark history’ of these institutions.

The Catholic Church, to hide its complicity in the abuse that took place in its institutions, approved of a state law in South Dakota designed to halt survivors from seeking legal retribution from the Catholic authorities, so shielding the Church from any responsibility or accountability (tinyurl.com/y3ccu5fw).

Today, similar policies very much reminiscent of the residential school systems persist but the language is couched in euphemisms. The children are still being ‘taken into care’ for their own ‘welfare’ and ‘protection’.

In 2016, 7 percent of children across Canada were aboriginal, but they accounted for nearly half of all the foster children in the country. In the province of Manitoba, 10,000 of the 11,000 children in care are indigenous and are taken from their homes for reasons such as poverty, bad housing or lack of wholesome food. Capitalist Christian ‘family values’ would rather break up families than fix the problem of deprivation and the underfunding of social services to the indigenous communities.

Even in the UK, we have witnessed the ‘abduction’ of kids due to the prejudice against those deemed different from ‘us’. From 2009 to 2018, the number of Roma children in care in England has risen by 933 percent, a figure disproportionate when compared with other ethnic groups.

Socialists have been accused of standing for uniformity but the advocate of assimilation, intent upon eradicating the lingering traces of pre-capitalist culture, has been and always will be the ruling class, striving for homogenous consumers with a few pockets of indigenous peoples retained as curiosities for the tourist trade. Socialism is not about one-size-fits-all. Communities and cultures will co-exist, in a global cooperative commonwealth that celebrates both diversity and unity

ALJO

Materialism and Art. by George Plechanoff (Part 2) (1926)

From the November 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Concluded from last month.)

Another example. Some writers have expressed the thought that in the appearance of man that seems ugly which reminds him of the features of lower animals. This is right in applying it to civilised people, though even here are many exceptions : a lion’s head to none of us seems ugly. Nevertheless, despite such exceptions, we can assert that civilised man, conscious that he is an incomparably higher being in comparison with the creatures of the forest, is afraid to resemble them and even tries to exaggerate his unlikeness. [14] But in applying this to primitive man we find a large and sweeping contrast. It is known that primitive men often pull out their own incisor teeth, in order to resemble ruminant animals; others file them sharply in order to resemble ferocious animals; some plait their hair so that it resembles the appearance of a horn. Often this tendency to imitate animals is connected with some religious faith of primitive man. But this does not in the least change the matter. Had primitive man looked upon the lower animals as we do, then there would have been no place for animals in religious performances. [15] Primitive man, then, looks upon them differently. Why? Because he stands on a different step of culture. That means if in one case a man tries to resemble animals and in another he is trying not to, then the different attitudes depend upon the conditions of his culture, i.e., again upon the social conditions above mentioned. Besides, we can express ourselves much more clearly if we say it depends upon the degree of development of his productive forces, upon his means of production. And so as not to be blamed for exaggeration and unilaterality of vision, we shall cite some quotations from the learned German traveller, Von-den-Steinen :

We will only then understand those people—says he about the Brazilian Indians—when we begin to view them as the products of a hunting state of existence. The most important parts of their existence are bound up with the life of animals, and from this experience their outlook and, correspondingly, their artistic motives have been formed. It is possible to say that their wonderfully rich art has originated entirely in their hunting life.

Chernyshevski wrote in his dissertation, “The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality” :

In plants we like the freshness of colour and the splendour and richness of form, which reveal a life full of energy and strength. The withering plant is not good, nor is a plant with little life juice good.

Chernyshevski’s dissertation is extremely interesting and singular in setting oppositions to questions of aesthetics according to the general principles of Feuerbach’s materialism. But history has always been a weak place for this kind of materialism, as is well seen from the above-quoted lines. “We like plants.” But who are the “we”? The tastes of people are extremely changeable, as Chernyshevski many times indicated in his book. It is known that primitive tribes—such as Bushmen and Australians—never ornament themselves with flowers, though they live in a country redolent with their presence. It is said that Tasmen were an exception, but it is impossible to verify the truth of this : the Tasmen have all died. At any rate it is quite well known that in the ornaments of primitive hunting people who had taken their motives from animals, plants are entirely absent. Contemporary science can explain this in no other way than upon the plane of productive forces. “Motives of ornaments, taken by hunting tribes from nature, consist exclusively of animal and human form,” says Ernest Grosse. They choose only phenomena which have for them a practical interest. The picking of plants, which, of course, to the primitive hunter is an occupation of a lower kind, is relegated to the woman and he himself takes no interest in it whatsoever. This explains why in the art of ornamentation no sign of vegetative motive is richly developed among any civilised people. In reality the passing over from animal ornaments to vegetative presents a symbol of great progress in the history of culture : “the transition from the hunting state to the agricultural.” [16]

Primitive art so clearly reflects in itself the conditions of productive forces, that now in doubtful moments the state of those forces is judged by art. Thus the Bushmen very willingly and with comparative ease draw people and animals. In the places inhabited by them some grottoes represent very picturesque galleries. But they never draw plants. In only one known exception of the rule : in representing a hiding huntsman in a bush, the crude drawing of the bush shows how unusual this subject was for the primitive painter. On this ground some ethnologists conclude that even if the Bushmen ever had a culture of a higher standard than now, which talking an general is impossible, then they most certainly have never known agriculture.

If all this is correct, then we can formulate the conclusion made by us above from the words of Darwin : the psychological nature of the primitive huntsman creates his aesthetic tastes and conceptions, and the state of productive forces, his hunting state, determines that only these and no other tastes and conceptions are formed. This conclusion, throwing a bright light upon the art of hunting tribes, is also another argument for the validity of the materialist conception of history.

Among civilised people the technique of production more rarely shows direct influence upon art. This fact, to the superficial observer a contradiction to the materialist conception of history, in reality, when considered in the profound manner of a sociologist, gives it brilliant support.

14  Lotze. Geschichte der .Aesthctiken, Munchen, 1868. IS. 568.)

15 Compare J. G. Frazer. “Totemism,” 1898, {P. 39), and Schweinfurth, ” In the Heart of Africa.” (P. 381.)

16 The Beginning of Art. (P. 149.)

Translated for “Modern Quarterly” by Bessie Peretz.

The Transcendental Power of Drama (1999)

Theatre Review from the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Touring.

The first time I saw Our Country’s Good, when it was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1988, I found it difficult to speak for some time afterwards. Fortunately most of the audience, including my partner and our friends, were similarly placed. The occasion has been so redemptive and affirmative, so full of the possibilities of transforming change, that we could only wait in our seats until our emotions quietened. Later we saw the play again, this time with our two children and their partners, and the impact was the same. No surprise then that at the end of the year Timberlake Wertenbaker won the Play of the Year Award for her thrilling, transcendent drama.

Now ten years later, Out of Joint are touring with the play. We caught it at Bury St Edmunds, from where it was going on to Blackpool and Eastbourne. I would advise anyone who is sympathetic to the ideas of freedom, equality, and democracy, to make a special effort to see this marvellous production, played with total conviction by a wonderful cast. With most of the media seemingly intent on dumbing-down—the better to enslave, coerce and imprison compliant minds—here is a tale of blazing vitality which affirms that people can free themselves from both their physical and ideological prisons, and emerge with confidence and a sense of purpose determined to manage their own lives.

Our Country’s Good is based on Thomas Keneally’s novel, The Playmaker. This tells the story of a group of criminals who were amongst the first to be transported to Australia. It describes how the 736 convicts aged between 9 and 82 travelled 16,000 miles and “endured eight months of unbearable hardship. Amazingly 690 survived the voyage. Chained up in the hold of the ship, they were deprived of light, and during bad weather, of air. The hold was cramped: 4 people shared a space 6 foot by 7 foot which was only 5 foot 5 inches high. After three months at sea their clothes had worn bare and they were given sacks instead”. This is the condition in which we see the convicts at the beginning of the play.

The First Governor of Australia, Captain Phillips, is surprisingly sympathetic to Enlightenment ideas, but he is surrounded by officers whose opinions evidence a full complement of alternative views of the world; people very like those we are familiar with today. Collins, the pragmatic Advocate General intent on doing what the law bids, especially if this carries the support of the Governor; the cynical Captain Tench who believes criminality is innate; Major Ross, bigot and sadist; the Reverend Johnson worrying lest he might offend the scriptures; and so on.

But Phillips is a realist who recognises that when the convicts are released at the end of their sentences, they will help to determine the new society being built in the colony. Advised by Tench that once a criminal always a criminal, he quotes Rousseau, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”; and wonders whether if the prisoners are criminals “we might have made them that way?”. Eventually, with the aid of Collins, he persuades his colleagues, to allow one of the junior officers to direct the prisoners in a play. “We belong to a country which has spawned great playwrights: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and in our time, Sheridan. The convicts will be speaking a refined, literate language and expressing sentiments of a delicacy they are not used to. It may remind them that there is more to life than crime and punishment. And we, this colony of a few hundred will be watching this together, for a few hours we will no longer be despised prisoners and hated gaolers. We will laugh, we may be moved, we may even think a little.”

And, slowly, painstakingly, notwithstanding the difficulties—and the sadistic bullying of some of the guards—some of the convicts begin to respond. Playing other parts, and finding the resources in themselves to do so, they begin to see the possibilities of growth and change both for themselves and others. Finally, against all the odds they succeed triumphantly.

Wertenbaker’s play is an eloquent and passionate statement about the transcendent power of theatre. But more than this it is also about the thrilling possibilities of change for us all. At the end of the play the audience continued to clap for almost a minute after the cast had left the stage. As well as applauding the actors and the wonderful script, it was easy to image that they might also have been reacting to the chance of exercising choice for themselves. The air seemed heady with intoxicating possibilities.

Michael Gill

About Books (1954)

Book Reviews from the March 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even in these days of scientific research, men cling to some very peculiar superstitions. Some of the beliefs and superstitions held by man in his less enlightened past now appear to be downright ridiculous. Worship flows from superstition and Mr. H. Cutner in his book,“A Short History of Sex-Worship" portrays for us some of the queer ideas, customs and forms of worship of bygone days.

For primitive man fertility was something to worship. Good crops and plentiful cattle meant an adequate food supply. Large families ensured many hands to sow and till and hunt and work. Famine and barrenness were things to dread. Small wonder that in his imaginings he conceived gods of fertility who had power to make or mar his existence. Such gods would need to receive sacrifices and to be worshipped in order to induce them to cast a favourable eye in the direction of the worshipper.

From such superstitions arose many religious cults and practices. The sun and the seasons came in for a good share of worship; so also did the human sex organs. This worship of man’s generative powers is known as phallic worship and has played a great part in the ideas and practices of many religious cults.

Mr. Cutner traces the history of phallic worship from earliest times, through the days of ancient Egypt, biblical times, the ancient Far East, Rome and India and shows us how many of the old-time phallic practices have passed into modem religions in a disguised form. He quotes from many sources but we think that the ideas of some of the authorities are a little far-fetched. It appears to us that some of them have seen a phallus around every corner and have mistaken everything that even remotely resembles a male or female sex organ for a sex symbol. We get the impression that some completely irrelevant factors have been viewed solely from an angle suitable to the investigator’s foregone conclusions.

Nevertheless, Mr. Cutner, in presenting this material to us in a concise and easily readable form, has done good work. Collected into his 215 pages is more useful material on the subject than is usually found in far weightier tomes.

The book is published by Watts and Co. in paper cover for 2s. 6d. and is available to members of the S.P.G.B. from Head Office book department.

From Australia comes a novel by a certain Frank J. Hardy entitled “Power without Glory.” The theme of the story is expressed in a quotation from Charles Kingsley that precedes part one of the book,

“A working man who deserts his own class, tries to get on and rise above it, enters into a lie.”

The story opens in 1890 and leads us through a series of Australian political events up to very recent years. It tells of a young working class man who, by unscrupulous and callous methods, rises out of his class to become a millionaire. Our knowledge of Australian political history is not sufficiently detailed for us to distinguish if all the political events narrated are completely factual. The names of a number of prominent and well-known Australian politicians appear in the story with very little said to their credit.

The author tells us in his concluding note that his book, and others to follow, will not advocate the class struggle but will recognise its existence; that Capitalism, having served its purpose, is convulsively passing, to be replaced by a higher social order. Socialism. Mr. Hardy's sympathies obviously lie with the Australian communists.

The book is illustrated but not well produced having a paper cover and poor quality print, which leads us to suppose that the author had some difficulty in finding a publisher.

We referred recently to books by Jack London and one by Irving Stone. We have recently read Irving Stone's story of Jack London entitled, "Sailor on Horse Back.” This is an earlier book of Mr. Stone’s and the style is not so mature as in “Darrow for the Defence.”

Jack London was undoubtedly a sincere, well loved and exceptional man. An illegitimate child, reared in poverty, he became a news-boy, a pirate, a laundry worker, a seal hunter, a tramp, a gold prospector, a lecturer, a farmer and, after many other things, one of the world's foremost novelists and short story writers. As a writer he earned fabulous sums, every penny of which, Mr. Stone tells us, was mortgaged before London received it because of his super-generosity and harebrained schemes to build boats, houses and farms.

Jack London was called a socialist. Some of his writings, such as his small booklet, “The Strength of the Strong” are masterpieces of educational propaganda dressed in story form. We would classify him as a “Rebel Labourite ” but much of his writing was useful in helping workers to an appreciation of their class status in capitalist society. His life was a series of sensations culminating in suicide in November, 1916. The story of his life makes interesting reading.

W. Waters

A Passage to Australia (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Australian Bicentennial celebrations, marking the arrival in Botany Bay in 1788 of the First Fleet carrying convicts, were also notable for the protests by Aborigines whose ancestors had arrived at least 40,000 years earlier. Transportation was not a new method of dealing with felons: a law of 1597 provided for banishment beyond the seas for "Rogues. Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars". In the 17th century convicts under commuted death sentences and some prisoners of war (Scots. English and Irish who had fought against Cromwell), were sent to work on plantations in Virginia. After 1717 there was an increase in transportation, including many convicted for minor offences. In a period of 60 years over 40.000 men and women, including 10.000 from Ireland, were sent to the New World. Prisoners were sold to shipping contractors who in turn sold them to plantation owners as indentured servants. Following the American revolution convicts were no longer acceptable there: many thousands of African slaves were working in the fields.

The Hulks Act of 1776 was intended as a stop-gap measure and allowed for convicts to be kept on the old warships moored in the Thames and around the coast, until somewhere else could be found to send them. There was no penitentiary system. The hulks and gaols were overcrowded, and there was fear of the "mob" (later the "criminal class"), so some way of dealing with criminals had to be found. In 1784 a new Act authorised the revival of transportation to places other than America. Captain Cook had landed in Botany Bay in 1770 but little was known about the Continent. The advantages of setting up a colony there were considered — as a base for British ships, to replace lands lost in America — but for the government the matter was settled by the urgent need for a place to send convicts, added to the possibility of claiming a strategic foothold in the area.

The First Fleet was under the command of Captain A. Phillip, first Governor of New South Wales, and carried 548 male and 188 female convicts with an escort of marines. Due to Phillip's care the death toll of 48, including 40 convicts, was comparatively light. In subsequent fleets the prisoners were shackled in rigid irons, grossly ill equipped, and starved; of 1.006 convicts on the Second Fleet 267 died during the voyage, "the worst in the whole history of penal transportation", and at least 150 after landing at Sydney. (The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes). No contractors, or captains, were punished for their cruel treatment and cheating of the helpless convicts. However, conditions did improve, and after 1815 the death rate for convicts was no worse than could be expected on any long sea journey at that time.

The government intention was that the colony should become self supporting in three years but the selection of convicts was made without any regard for the labour needed to establish and run the new colony. The authorities deliberately cleared the hulks and prisons of invalids. Phillip protested that such a policy "clears the gaols and may ease the parishes from which they are sent; but. "if it continued, the colony would "remain for years a burthen to the mother-country" (Hughes, p.105). He aimed to establish something more than a penal colony but his requests for settlers with a knowledge of farming were not met. and the first five years were a desperate struggle for survival. For the government this was the cheapest way of disposing of the convicts.

During the total period of transportation more than 160,000 men. women and children were dumped in that far colony - most did not return. The shortest sentence was for seven years and the homeward passage had to be paid for. Some were brought back by subscriptions raised at home. Drawing on a wide range of material Robert Hughes describes the system of transportation through the testimony and experience of the convicts. Hundreds of letters and petitions were written by, and on behalf of, convicts. It was not unusual for victims of crime to petition for mercy on behalf of criminals - "as I freely forgive him myself — and their families who would be abandoned and in great need. Wives begged to be allowed to join their husbands and husbands implored their wives to raise the money to accompany them. Very few could find the price of a ticket and the wives mostly got the "Usual answer” from the Home Secretary's office.

Yet the necessity for women in the settlement was recognised and the original plan had been to kidnap Tahitian women. Governor Phillip wanted female convicts to be sent out for the male convicts to marry, and offered rewards of land, or free working time, to those who married. It became the policy for women of a "marriageable age" to be selected, though without any explicit acknowledgement that they were required as breeding stock and sexual conveniences. Despite the common view that they were all whores, the women's most common conviction was for theft (more than 80 per cent) and though about a fifth of the 24.000 women transported might have "survived" by prostitution. it was never a transportable offence. Women were "treated as a doubly colonised class throughout the life of the penal system" (Hughes, p.261). Their labour was of low value and many endured humiliation and degradation. In the Female Register drawn up by the Rev. S. Marsden in 1806. all common-law wives, even those in relationships of many years' standing, were counted as "concubines". Some women were given their ticket-of-leave on arrival, while others were lined up to be picked as servants, with military officers having first choice. Those old or infirm, or who became pregnant while on assignment, were sent to the female factories — a loft above a jail.

Many of the early transportations were for small, often ridiculously slight, offences. After 1815 the general tendency was for transportation to be reserved for less trivial crimes, but the effect of the reduction in the number of capital offences was to increase the transportable crimes. Those charged with felonies were for the most part poor and ill educated but (until after 1836) had to speak for themselves in court, it being claimed that the judges represented the interests of the prisoners. Those sentenced to transportation were mostly labourers and city-dwellers. Between one-half and two- thirds had previous convictions, mostly for theft and "only a minuscule fraction could be classed as political offenders" (ibid. p. 159). However, representatives of nearly every English protest movement, industrial upheaval and agrarian revolt, including 100 Chartists, were transported: Scottish Jacobins were thus effectively dealt with. The largest single English group sailed for Australia after the Swing riots of 1830, when starving labourers protested their low wages. Nineteen were hanged and 481 transported — as many were imprisoned.

Most of the convicts did not get to the dreaded penal settlements like Norfolk Island or Port Arthur but served their time assigned to free settlers, with time allowed to work on their own account. In the early years officers of the New South Wales Corps (known as the Rum Corps because of their monopoly of the rum trade) were given 100 acre land grants, plus 10 convicts maintained at government expense. Officers could raise capital against their regimental pay. Freed convicts (emancipists) were given small land grants but they lacked capital and farming knowledge and had greater difficulty contending with the extremes of climate. A few emancipists did very well but as early as 1800 "the community was virtually in the hands of a score or so of farming officers, holding the small grantees in their power, and continually in the process of buying them out" (The Story of Australia, A.G.L. Shaw. p.50). After four years of a seven-year sentence, convicts could get a ticket-of-leave and work for wages (in the early years payment was in kind, there being little money in circulation). Free labour was much sought after, especially for skills in the basic trades, where the wages and conditions were better than in England.

The fate of convicts was a lottery. They might be assigned to a benevolent master in a settled area, or to a sadistic one living in the outback. On Van Diemen's Land the Governor would take assigned servants away from settlers found indulging them. About one-tenth of the convicts were retained by the government on public works like digging ditches, building jails and stores and making roads. Those who committed further offences in the colony could, after trial, be sent to the penal settlements (after 1830 this could be added to the transportation sentence). They could also be made to work in chain gangs — and flogged. Discipline was maintained throughout the system with the cat-o-nine-tails. Sentence by a magistrate was required before an assigned man was flogged, but in the penal settlement the convicts were at the mercy of the governor and a system of convict overseers and informers. Flogging offences included "rebelliousness", "insolence", "refusal to work" and "singing a song". Women were rarely flogged, except on Norfolk Island.

Transportation was supposed to rid England of crime, along with the criminals, but poverty begets theft. It was a time of violent changes. Handworkers were impoverished and agricultural workers driven from the land to face unemployment, or starvation wages in the factory districts. Between 1830 and 1845 more than ten per cent of the working population were classed as paupers. Transportation reached its peak in the 1830s. while in the growing Australian pastoral industry there was a ravenous demand for convict labour. Contrary to the view of criminals as born rather than made, most of those transported completed their sentences with a ticket-of-leave. after a period of assignment, and were absorbed into colonial society as free citizens. Their children showed the lowest crime rate of any group. Unlike England there was always a demand for labour; stories got back of how well convicts were doing (those who sank in the system did not write home) and confirmed the opinion of those who claimed that the punishment was not a deterrent because it was too easy.

Free settlers were encouraged to go to Australia and by 1830 the free settlers and colonial free-born far outnumbered the convicts in New South Wales. By 1840 the main political division was between rich and poor rather than "bond and free". The system of assigned convict labour had paved the way for free settlement and had enabled the continent to be colonised many years before it would otherwise have been possible. Though some employers still wanted convict labour, after fifty years of settlement the colony no longer wished to be a dumping ground for criminals. In England the political and moral climate had moved against transportation (slavery had been abolished in the Empire in 1833). When the Molesworth Committee was set up in 1837 to enquire into the System of Transportation, the decision to end it had already been made.

In the contrary manner of reformist achievement, after fifty years transportation was ended in 1840 — but only to New South Wales. The system of assignment was abolished and conditions were made more rigorous for convicts. The problem of crime had not been solved and the penitentiary system had still to be developed. More jails were built, including Dartmoor and one to replace the hulks at Portsmouth. By 1852 there was space for 16.000 prisoners and prison was cheaper than transportation, at least for shorter sentences.

In the meantime convicts were sent to the by now separate colony of Van Diemen's Land, which was run on harsher lines than the mainland. 26.000 were added to the convict population before 1850. more than the system could absorb. Perhaps the final blow to the system was the gold rush in New South Wales in 1851, which added to the attractions for the thousands of immigrants who now arrived from England each year. In 1853 transportation was officially ended and the colony's name became Tasmania. Western Australia had asked to become a penal settlement in 1850 and the last convict ship, carrying Irish prisoners, arrived there in 1868. More than a hundred years later the jails built to hold convicts no longer transported are still in use, holding many more prisoners than they were designed for in insanitary and degrading conditions, and still an ineffective response to crime.

For the original inhabitants of Australia and Tasmania it was particularly tragic that it was a penal colony established in their land. “A frontier society based on slave labour, run by the threat of extreme violence and laced with rigid social divisions was not likely to treat the Aborigines compassionately or even fairly" (Hughes, p.272).

Pat Deutz

Capitalism in Australia (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the end of the second world war two-and-a-half million workers from Europe, including a million from Britain, have gone to Australia. The majority go in the hope that they are going to make a fresh start and are leaving their problems behind them. They have been attracted by advertizing. (One slogan declares “We are making Australia a better place to live in”.) The emigrants are going there to work. To be more accurate they will be “getting a living”, but as they will be doing the bidding of some employer they are not free men and women.

Australia is a one-country Island-Continent. Its recorded history did not start until 1788 when the first Europeans arrived. Prior to that this huge land mass was an unknown land and, when discovered, was inhabited only by a handful of Aborigines. It was occupied without opposition, never knew feudalism, and has not known revolution or civil war. The early settlers “brought” capitalism with them and set in motion all the paraphernalia. The capitalist system was therefore imported into Australia.

Australia has vast prairies, formidable deserts, rich grazing lands, plentiful minerals, beautiful beaches. Its population has grown to 13,000,000, most of whom live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and small towns along the east coast. With Darwin, Adelaide and Perth, these cities are the major centres of commerce. World capitalism has booms and slumps, and Australia in its short history has experienced both. In the 19th century there were two slumps, in 1842 and 1892, but recovery was stimulated each time because of gold discoveries. Gold rushes always attract fresh emigrants with tradesmen, shopkeepers and so forth in their wake. By the turn of the century, capitalist development was again on the upgrade. After the first world war there was a boom which encouraged still more migrants but it was short-lived, for Australia did not escape the effects of the 1929 world depression. The older generation of the working class remember those years: the unemployment, the Labour Exchanges and the grinding poverty.

Today, Australia is called an “Awakening Giant”. It presents itself as an expanding capitalist country making the most of the “Winds of Change”. Its agricultural and mineral wealth are being exploited to the full. Exports in minerals alone (iron ore, zinc, lead, coal, copper) bring in millions of dollars annually. Vast amounts of capital, Australian and foreign, is invested to develop industry of every kind. The cities of Sydney and Melbourne with their teeming freeways, their busy dock areas and airports, their skyscraper office blocks, are the outward symbols of Australian capitalism. At the same time they testify where some of the surplus-value extracted by the exploitation of the working class has gone.

Propagandists describe Australia today as “the country of the future”, "young and vigorous”, and so on. But such words are idle chatter as far as workers are concerned. In Australia, as in all capitalist countries, the working class does not share in profits: those go to the capitalist class, the owners. During the boom period in Australia, for the capitalist it means full order-books, profit and prosperity. For the working class it means “full employment” and “regular wages” — which means rushing to and from work and the usual struggle to make ends meet.

In Australia wages appear to be high, but appearances are deceptive. The workers have to fight to maintain their wage levels in relation to increasing prices. A recent report in the Daily Mail said (9 May 1974):

A new campaign is being launched to lure Britons to well paid jobs in Australia. Miners will be offered about £100 per week and Electrical Fitters about £60 per week. The booming Kalgoorlie gold and nickel mines are hoping to take on 400 Britons in the next three years.

Like every other commodity, the price for labour-power fluctuates around its value according to supply and demand. There is an urgent demand for miners but in other trades £50 a week would be considered average. A trip around the shopping precincts, the big stores and the car showrooms makes clear the workers have access to little when the prices of goods are considered. Much in evidence are signs advertizing Easy Terms, Weekly Accounts and “Lay- By”, in other words workers have to mortgage their wages to get things they need. If they were receiving half as much as the propagandists imply, none of these tricks would have to be employed. In addition to food, clothing and the running of a car to get them to work, are their mortgages and rents. Many workers live out their lives in blocks of flats and others in Commission (Council) Houses. It is true they have access to the beautiful beaches and can go surfing or swimming. Sport is encouraged and Australian Rules football and cricket are popular, but what fundamental difference is there between the lives of the workers of Australia and those in Europe or USA? In the final analysis there is no difference. In the article in the Daily Mail appeared also the words of an Australian Government spokesman: “The money for Miners is good but it’s bloody hard work”.

About 2¼ million are organized in the trade-union movement; strikes are quite frequent. There is “National Arbitration Machinery” to cover the whole country in the event of strikes overlapping from one State to another. Each State has its own Industrial Tribune to intervene in strikes, make binding agreements and fix minimum wage rates. These bodies pretend the class struggle does not exist and are anti-working class as they uphold the whole structure of the wages system. Their existence and functions will end when the wages system itself is abolished by a Socialist working class.

To go to the polling booth in Australia is compulsory, but workers do not show much interest in politics. This is probably the result of conditions since the war for the younger generation especially. For 23 years there was a coalition Government of Liberals (read Tories) and Country Party but a year ago this was replaced by the Australian Labour Party. Not that it will make any difference. All are reformist parties. They act in the interest of the capitalist class, and the working class will have to learn this.

A small Socialist Party of Australia was formed nearly fifty years ago and groups exist in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. These groups are endeavouring, as do Socialists everywhere, to gain the ear of their fellow workers. The distances are vast, but nevertheless they keep in touch, distribute Socialist literature and use every opportunity to explain the cause of poverty, insecurity and war. The movement will grow. They are conscious of the fact that they are the only Party of Socialism and of the working class in Australia. They are indeed worthy of being one of the Companion Parties of Socialism. What more fitting phrase can be used to summarize their efforts other than “Good on You!”

J. C. Gormley

Between the Lines: From the land which gave us Rupert Murdoch . . . (1988)

The Between the Lines TV Review column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1988 is the year when TV discovered Australia in a big way. Firstly, it discovered that Australia was "discovered" two hundred years ago. Complete historical nonsense, of course: Australia was settled by its native Aborigines for about 30,000 years before the white "civilisers" arrived to murder them and leave who remained in apartheid-style reservations.

So TV has celebrated the land which produced Rupert Murdoch, the Bee Gees and Dame Edna. Fortunately, BBC2 offered a chance to avert our eyes from the revolting pictures of Charlie and Di's state visit, with her modelling with a team of beefy surfers while he discovered a whole new variety of plant life to enjoy conversations with. (Most of the latter are believed to be employed in the British Embassy.)

Instead, we could watch John Pilger's quite brilliant three-part documentary, The Last Dream which told, with passion, something of the real history of Australia. Pilger described how the Aborigines were peaceful people who lived at one with nature with respect for the land. And how the land was stolen, leaving them today as the lowest strand of the working class in a nation which cannot cope with a culture of sharing. Unemployment and alcoholism are very high among the Aborigines who survive.

In the second programme—the best of the trilogy for its uncompromising exposure—Pilger tore to pieces the long-standing myth that Australia is a classless society. He not only told us about the millionaire parasites like Kerry Packer, Alan Bond and Rupert Murdoch—he showed us them dining in celebration of their good fortune of being capitalist rulers in a land of illusory equality. Dining with them was Bob Hawke, the Labour Prime Minister of Australia.

Pilger lost no time and spared no detail in exposing the anti-working class attitudes and policies of the Labour government. Nobody could have watched the documentary without seeing through the lies of Hawke, who claims to be a socialist and the workers' friend. John Pilger seems to entertain some illusions about previous Australian Labour governments but he cannot be faulted in his demonstration that the present one is simply an ally of Australian capital against Australian labour.

In the third programme Pilger dealt with the Australian war record, placing special emphasis on its part in Vietnam, where the Australian state acted as an unrespected military servant of US imperialism. Pilger pointed out how Australians have always been sent to die in other people's wars. What he meant was that Australia has been subordinated to the needs of other national capitalist interests. True as this may be, the really important point (not made by Pilger) is that workers in all countries are always fighting wars which are not their own. Some capitalists win and some capitalists lose but it is always the workers who die needlessly.

The series ended fittingly with the singing of what the present writer at least regards as the greatest anti-war song ever written: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle, himself an Australian. If you have never heard the song you should go out of your way to do so; if you have a chance to see a repeat of the Pilger series it is a must for workers who want to find out the history of what really happened to our class.

On the subject of working-class history and great music, the Channel Four documentary on Woody Guthrie, which was shown in January, was another classic: it would have been good to hear Pete Seeger singing Guthrie's This Land Is My Land (the uncensored version which deals with the iniquity of private property) while Pilger was describing the "discovery" of the Aborigines by the British plunderers.

In addition to TV's celebration of Britain's imperialist past, 1988 has also seen one of Australia's tackiest commodities hit the peak-time screen. Neighbours (BBC1, 5.35pm, Monday-Friday) is the soap opera devised to make Crossroads look like something on the Oxford English Literature syllabus. It is viewed by 14 million people daily. As a depiction of working-class life in Australia it is an unfunny joke.

Where are the unemployed workers? Why do no black Australians ever appear? Do Australians really spend most of their lives incessantly bitching against one another? Is there something in the air in Australia which makes sentimental music appear every time the tension heightens? (Tension-heightening in Neighbours is a euphemism for one of the characters threatening to kill the little girl next door and her parents, or another woman finding out that her grand-daughter—whose existence she didn't know about until the episode before last—is in fact her husband's mistress's child.

If you ever over-indulge on the lager at lunchtime and can't be bothered to stick your finger down your throat, why not make a rush for the telly and watch Neighbours? Personally, I don't give a XXXX what 14 million viewers say—I think the programme is written by the bloke who writes Bob Hawke's speeches: he should be put on the next convict ship to New Zealand and left to die of boredom.

Steve Coleman