The Menace of Aerial Warfare - Part 3 (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

In 1923 the League of Nations arranged for an authoritative investigation of the possibilities of bacteriological warfare. The result of the investigation is summed up in Victor Lefebure's “Scientific Disarmament."

Open the book at page 215 and skim the pages which follow: —

. . . they referred to the use of cultures of cholera and typhus, mainly by infecting water supplies. Professor Pfeiffer, although pointing out the obstacles in the way of successful use by infecting the supplies of larger towns, stated, “There are, no doubt, other possibilities. Infectious germs might, for instance, be thrown from aircraft direct into pure water reservoirs. In such a case filtration would be ineffectual.” He refers to the possibility of inoculation, but goes on, “An epidemic whose very name recalls the horrors and devastations which it caused in former centuries, and which is, therefore, particularly likely to spread terror and dismay, is the human plague. The most likely way of spreading an epidemic of plague would, no doubt, be the scattering of plague-infected rats, which might very easily be achieved with the help of aircraft. In this way an epidemic of bubonic plague might almost certainly be brought about in the trenches, which in any case are alive with rats; in the interior of the enemy country, also, the dissemination of plague germs on a large scale would be possible, resulting undoubtedly in the formation of centres of infection. . . Professor Pfeiffer also deals with artificial infection of projectiles with . . . anthrax, glanders and perhaps rabies. . . . Professor Cannon comments on crop attack. . . . Professor Madsden gives a balanced view of the possibilities as to the present and the future. . . . The means which bacteriology possesses in its present state of development would certainly suffice to give rise to epidemics of greater or lesser extent; airmen or persons with a knowledge of the topography of localities might infect the central sources of the water or milk supply of a big city, and thereby propagate epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera or other intestinal diseases. Epidemics of this nature might even be fairly serious.

Major Lefebure continues to point out that, although Professor Madsden and some others believe that epidemics could be got under control without much damage being done, they obviously are not taking into full account the special circumstances of war and the fact that diseases would be propagated on a far larger scale than is usual under peace conditions.

He says, quite rightly: —

Now if an attack of this nature were to be made producing hundreds of thousands of casualties requiring (special) treatment quickly, it would take us far and away outside our normal medical facilities both as to appliances and personnel. (The word (special) here replaces a phrase of the same meaning to reduce the necessary quotation to a minimum. L.G.S.).

In addition, resistance to a particular disease is not nearly so high if the population is not exposed to the bacteria of the disease in normal life. It would, therefore, be very unsafe to prophesy the possible rate at which an epidemic of (say) Bubonic plague would spread, since Europeans have not been exposed to this bacteria for several hundred years.

The position at the present time cannot be calculated, but I think it cannot be denied that bacteriological warfare is an additional menace to the security of civilian populations as well as to combatants. Its possibilities we shall learn if we experiment, although the value of such an experiment is yet to be established, but it is certain that expert opinion is firmly convinced that, be the damage great or small, bacteria are definitely an addition to the armoury of destructive weapons.

The quotations I have used were taken from a report made in 1923—it is now 1936.

Protection

There is, and can be, no possible protection whatever for civilian populations against chemical warfare from the air—(Major-Gen. Jackson, ex- Assistant Director, War Office).

There is no protection for the civilian against aerial attack.

Nowhere must this be better realised than in Government circles which have access to knowledge denied to the general public, and the services of experts in all departments of warfare and technology.

They suggest, as a precaution, that the people be instructed in methods of protection, when they know quite well that there are none.

The very best that can be done is to arrange and organise essential services, such as power-stations, fire brigades and doctors, so that they can function and perhaps relieve some part of the suffering with a minimum of interference. That this much is possible, if only gas be considered, is admitted, but high-explosive, thermit and the inevitable stampede of the people, we have not even begun to take into account.

The Government plans decontaminating centres, i.e., receiving stations where the injured can be medically treated and have their dangerous clothing destroyed or made safe for use. It plans to make respirators available for the essential services, and, possibly, a modified form of mask for the civilian population which would afford partial or temporary protection for the lungs, the assumption being, presumably, that this latter type would be used as a subsidiary protection.

The cost of an efficient respirator at the moment is about £4, but mass production would probably result in a considerable drop in price—to (say) 30s. if the manufacture was unsubsidised. Taking war-time production as a basis for calculation, about six months would be required to manufacture 10,000,000 masks. This does not take into account the special needs of young children or aged persons, for whom respiratory protection is a very difficult matter. It has been suggested that very small children might be placed in a sack of some gas-proof material, the air to be supplied by a pump through a filter, but the efficacy of the idea is doubtful, and no useful suggestions have yet been made to overcome the fact that a gassed or injured parent would be unable to continue pumping. Presumably, too, it would be necessary to anaesthetise the child before inserting it into the sack. Otherwise it would probably act in the same way as a cat in a bag—struggle furiously to get out.

To the suggestion of gas-shelters I oppose the following facts and figures. If bomb- and gas-proof shelters could be constructed to house (say) 500 people, and such large shelters present a considerable engineering problem, about 10,000 would be required as a minimum to house the population of London in immediate danger.

These shelters, which at present exist on paper and in the minds of optimistic speculators, would take months, if not years, to build. They would need a reinforced concrete roof 13 feet thick, or to be sunk to a depth of 80 feet underground to provide reasonable safety from high-explosive. The walls, if the shelter was built above ground, would need to be strong enough to carry the roof and to withstand the shock of high-explosive on the roof or the side-thrust on the walls if it dropped in the immediate vicinity. Such shelters would have to be constructed to admit no air whatsoever except through special filters. Apart from the fact that no device is known that will go on filtering indefinitely, and, therefore, if intensive attacks were carried out over a period of several days the filters would probably release the gas in ever-growing quantities into the chamber, the smallest crack in the structure would admit air directly from outside and make the filters useless.

Chimneys could be used to draw pure air from above the gas-cloud, but to be reasonably safe they would have to be constructed to a height of at least 150 feet—an excellent target for high-explosive. The following facts should demolish any arguments in favour of chimneys: —

A 500/1,000 kg. explosive bomb can demolish a whole block of houses, even if it only explodes in the vicinity.

A 100/200 kg. explosive bomb can destroy a house of several stories.

A 50 kg. explosive bomb can cause serious damage.

(General Von Haeften.)

The chimney that could withstand the explosive force of a 100-200 kg. bomb planted reasonably near the base cannot be built.

Water would be a serious problem since mustard gas, in particular, sinks to the bottom of reservoirs and renders water drawn from such a source undrinkable.

Food supplies would have to be rigorously protected from mustard and lewisite, and as attacks on docks and wharves with high-explosive, thermit and mustard gas would be an enemy's certain course of action, it is difficult to see how it could be done.

If an air-raid on London was signalled, the city would be plunged into total darkness. At the same time the public would be told of the impending raid in some way or another, and, human nature being what it is, would attempt to evacuate the city. Almost the whole of London’s private car traffic would be thrown, in pitch darkness, on to roads already incapable of providing for normal traffic. Buses would leave their routes and head for open country. People would make for the country on foot, by cycle, lorry or any kind of transport they could commandeer. The rate of evacuation would not, perhaps, be very great until the raid commenced, but when the dead and wounded and fires springing up in every direction became an actuality, then it cannot be doubted that something {in the nature of a stampede would commence. Necessarily, thousands would be killed in the raid, but the problem would take on its most serious aspects when the question of food, shelter and sanitary arrangements for several million panic-stricken people became of urgent importance. It is more than possible that famine and epidemic diseases would have to be dealt with.

If it is thought that I exaggerate possibilities, here are the words of the military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: —

It has been suggested that in the event of severe air attacks, 40 per cent. of London's population would leave the city within the first 48 hours, and 80 per cent. within the week. Such an estimate may be exaggerated, but it is, nevertheless, essential to consider ways of controlling any such mass evacuation and of feeding and housing refugees. 

Gerald Heard has expressed much the same opinion recently, and from occasional items of news it is permissible to assume that the Government are awake to this probability.

Even if efficient gas-shelters were in existence, it is mere likely than not that their protective capacity would be doubted and an evacuation take place on nearly as large a scale.

The imagination refuses to function except in vague generalisation. To fill in details would be beyond its scope.

For man, woman or child there is no sure protection.

Summary

War would inevitably lead to destructive air attacks on the cities, not only of England, but of all belligerent countries, with effects very much as I have described.

Modern warfare is, above all, a battle of productive capacity, and a necessary condition of the factory operative being able to function is that he shall be reasonably free from attack. It is therefore very much to a country’s advantage to harry its enemy’s centres of production and distribution.

It is more than possible that, after simultaneous raids on the capital cities of all the belligerents, the effects would be so grave that an immediate armistice would be sought by ail parties. The vulnerable spots in any country are its great centres of population and production, but without such centres it is impossible to wage war on a modem scale with modern weapons, and, in spite of opinions to the contrary, there can be little doubt that the full possibilities of unrestricted warfare in Europe are well-known to all European Governments and military experts. The present spectacle qf elderly statesmen trying to adapt the diplomacy of Metternich, the Napoleonic wars and the fin-de-siecle to modern conditions, would be amusing if it did not carry within itself the germs of gigantic tragedy.

We may observe the fear in action in the bluff and counter-bluff that has characterised the dispute between Italy and England. There is no doubt that Italy's action threatened British capitalists' African and Imperial interests, and, in pre-war days, strong military action would have been taken at the commencement of the dispute. Now the case is altered. By using the League of Nations to declare an economic siege against Italy, Britain hoped to protect its interests without resorting to that unknown quantity—war. Mussolini had already made tentative arrangements to evacuate Naples, but it is doubtful if his advisers would have allowed him to declare war.

It would be a very bold speculator indeed who would dare to predict the future, but the possibility of war will be more remote when its dangers are more widely realised.

L. G. Savage

[Concluded.]

News in Review: Unions to heel (1965)

The News in Review column from the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unions to heel

The time when the Attlee government were in office was the heyday of the unofficial strike. The reason was that very often an unofficial action was the only method of pushing a wage claim; whatever the official union leaders were compelled to do at the negotiating table, in public many of them championed the wage-restraint policy of the Labour government.

Since then, times have not been so good for the wildcat striker. The official strike has come back into respectability.

The Wilson government did not find the unions so docile. On the very night of Labour’s victory last October, TUC General Secretary George Woodcock made it plain that he still thought the unions’ first job was to stand out for their members’ interests, independent if need be from government policy.

But it was predictable that some union leaders should decide that, simply because Labour is in power, the economic fortunes of the employers should come first.

Last March Mr. John Boyd, who is on the executive of both the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Labour Party, appealed to the annual women’s conference of his union for “. . . sympathetic understanding, co-operation, discipline and restraint . . ."

The moderates have an even more impressive convert. Mr. Ted Hill of the Boilermakers, who was once the enfant terrible of the unions’ left wing, wrote in his union journal last January that unions should help the TUC to reduce strikes and restrictive practices: "If there is likely to be a demarcation dispute, submit the matter to arbitration . . . if there is likely to be a strike, take the matter through procedure before taking strike action.”

Are the unions, then, tamed? Will they give up the struggle for better wages and conditions? On the contrary, the pressures of capitalism will themselves show up the words of men like Boyd and Hill for the wishful thinking that they are. For example the AEU women, just like the Labour Party women before them, have demanded equal pay. All the time, the more usual type of wage claim is coming in, as inevitable as tomorrow's dawn.

This is not surprising. During Labour's first three months of office the Official Index Retail Prices which, whatever, its deficiencies is some sort of guide in these matters, rose by about one and a half per cent. This means that the buying power of the pound, taken as twenty shillings when Labour came into office, had fallen to 19s. 8d. by last January.

The working class cannot afford to ignore such factors as this. Rising prices mean a decline in living standards, unless they are balanced out by a rise in wages. Apart from that, there are other things which ensure that the working class will carry on the struggle to improve their wages and working conditions.

This is an inevitable by product of the basic employer/employee relationship of capitalism, which as long as it lasts will always produce strikes and other disputes.

This situation will not be abolished, nor even changed, by speeches and resolutions, nor by the breathtaking manoeuvres of union leaders who are left wing firebrands when the Tories are in office and who disappoint their deluded followers by becoming staid right wingers when Labour takes over.

Art, for whose sake?

An essential part of the popular British conception of an American millionaire is that he is a vulgar Philistine who yet likes to flaunt his wealth by buying up famous works of art which mean nothing to him.

It follows from this that, whenever a rich American buys a famous picture, or piece of sculpture, over here, and wants to take it back home, there are protests on all sides.

This is what happened when Mr. Norton Simon bought Rembrandt's picture of his son, Titus, at Christie's. The protests were all the stronger because Mr. Simon appeared to have put in his successful bid after the auctioneer's hammer had come down for the last time.

The press reports of what they called this “dramatic” incident inspired many workers whose usual experience of artistic enjoyment is confined to studying the Maidenform Bra adverts on the Underground to assume a sudden knowledge of the intricacies of top rank auctions.

Everyone seemed to be agreed that it would be a calamity if Titus left this country. In some ways it was reminiscent of the hooha over da Vinci's Madonna and Child; there were attempts to stop the Board of Trade granting an export licence for Titus, appeals to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide for repurchasing the picture in his Budget, schemes to raise the £798,000 needed to buy it back. A simple soul would have assumed from this that Titus was a British picture, and that there had been long queues of art-hungry people to view it. In fact Rembrandt was, of course, a Dutchman, which, on the protestors’ own arguments, means that the Dutch are the only people who have a right to be annoyed about the affair.

Then again, the picture had not been open to public viewing but had been part of a rich Englishman’s collection in the Channel Islands. (Were the Dutch annoyed when Titus was originally bought out of Holland?)

Nationalism is never logical, but it is blatantly stupid when it works up its ire over the artistic products of another country.

Most of the people who were indignant over the Rembrandt picture can never have come remotely near to seeing it when it was in the Cooks’ private collection. At any rate, Mr. Simon intended it for wider enjoyment than that; he planned to show it at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Indignation would be better directed against a social system in which works of art can be bought and sold, and bargained for, and be the subject of nationalistic emotions. Rembrandt, who died in neglected squalor, might have been bitterly amused by it all.

Gas in Vietnam

The world has never recovered from the shock of the first gas attacks on the Western Front in 1915, and the sense of shock has been in no way lessened by the knowledge that there were many other horrors borne of that war.

Why the shock should have been so intense and so long-lasting has never been adequately explained. It persists today, although there is no gas which inflicts a worse death than napalm, or the fringes of a nuclear flash, or indeed many other of the ghastly machines which capitalism has invented and developed to a high degree of efficiency to prosecute its wars.

Poison gas is outlawed by what are called the international rules of war something which, although it allows all manner of horrors to flourish uncondemned, seems to convince many people that war is really a comfortable, humane occupation for gentlemen.

It was this combination of fear and hypocrisy which caused the storm over the American gas attacks in Vietnam. The United States government protested that they would not dream of using such barbaric methods of warfare (at the time they were busily dropping napalm bombs) and that the gas was really harmless stuff which any government might use against strikers or demonstrators.

The only comment to make on this is that it may be true. And then again it may not. No government—especially one which has such widespread interests and involvements as Washington—thinks twice about lying when it suits its purpose, and purposes are particularly open to being suited in wartime.

Gas warfare has one great thing to commend it to the designers of capitalism’s war machine. It destroys human beings but it does not damage property. The only snag, from their point of view, is that ways of delivering the stuff have to be found, and that these will he attacked by the other side with all the old methods of destruction—high explosives, incendiaries, nuclear missiles—which means that property is going to suffer after all.

There is no way out of it. War is not going to become a humane business. Even a comparatively small affair like the struggle in Vietnam can call into use some ghastly methods of dealing out death and destruction.

It is futile to expect capitalism to take a step backwards and humanise its wars—futile to expect a great power to throw away powerful, and possibly dominating, weapons. The people who have protested over the use of gas in Vietnam—many of them are the usual weary crowd of “Progressives’’—are once more turning their backs on the facts of capitalist life.

This js a dangerous habit. Capitalism has a way of making us face facts—and plenty of equipment with which to do it.

The Budget

Budget Day is usually the occasion for a certain amount of clowning about on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of this is undoubtedly stimulated by the newspapers’ anxiety to unearth what they call a human story behind the impersonally vast amounts of money with which the Chancellor juggles.

Thus there was Mr. Heathcoat Amory feeding the birds on his window sill. There was Mr. Maudling’s comely young daughter suddenly bursting to fame as a film starlet after the press had discovered her. And this year there was Mr. Callaghan’s new dispatch box—symbolising, he promised us, a new era in the Treasury.

After this it came as no surprise when the Chancellor chose the old faithfuls of tobacco and alcohol to bear increased taxes. These are two of the fields where government control has established near-monopoly conditions, which enables prices to be high enough for the State to skim off a nice, creamy dollop of tax.

Many of the Budget's extra imposts were widely forecast by the financial journalists. These “experts” get their living by discussing the effects which the government's financial policies are supposed to have on the British economy. But while they predict in one breath that a certain tax will operate in a certain way, they have to admit in the next that the whole thing is unpredictable.

For example, Alan Day in The Observer:

. . . very large tax increases . . . are needed if the Government wants both to slow down inflation and to keep up a more reasonable pace of expansion of output

And in the same article:

The authors of last week’s Economic Report were clearly bewildered by the task even of explaining what happened last year . . . Any judgement about this year's developments must involve a high degree of uncertainty.

For example, Richard Fry in The Guardian:

. . . the Chancellor must devise his tax claims so that the total effect will have just the right impact on demand, production, and employment over the coming year. That is always a delicate and chancy operation and it will be harder than usual this year.

This confusion persists, even after the Budget is out Mr. Callaghan himself, in a television interview, admitted that he was not sure what the result of his Budget would be and that he could only hope his sums and forecasts would turn out right Nobody pointed out the obvious, that capitalism is a chaotic social system which cannot be planned or budgeted or controlled.

Workers, also, are confused by Budgets. They are convinced that what the Chancellor decides will have a significant effect on their livelihoods. In fact, with or without tax, everyone who has to work for a living gets a wage which is generally enough to reproduce their working energies and abilities.

Taxation is really a concern of the capitalist class. They are the class who need the vast State machine, the armed forces and their costly weapons. It is in their interests that State medical and social services are run. They are the only class who can afford to bear the immense tax burden.

These facts are not generally accepted. Budgets are excellent subjects for the customary political shadow-boxing between the Labour and Conservative parties, and this year’s was no exception. But no Budget has ever had more than a negligible effect upon the lives of the mass of the people. Their poverty and problems have deeper roots.

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that most workers ignore this, preferring to spend their time grumbling about a few pennies on or off beer, fags and the other consolations of their drab existence.

Ku-Klux-Klan

One of the results of the much-publicised Civil Rights activities in Selma, Alabama, and the murder of a white woman civil rights worker, has been to focus attention on that grotesque body the Ku-Klux-Klan.

The excesses of this gang of bigots and racketeers are too well known to need repeating, but they are probably nearing the end of the road. A mere shadow of their former selves, although still a murderous shadow, President Johnson’s violent attack on them, and the Congressional Committee of Investigation, that looks as if it means business, will probably finish them off.

After all, a powerful modern state like the U.S.A. cannot tolerate an Invisible Empire within its boundaries, that defies its laws and holds it up to contempt.

Perhaps just as important, this is a world in which a large number of independent states with predominately coloured populations exist, and are growing in importance. These have economic, political and military value to the United States, particularly as other powerful States are looking for opportunities to muscle in. American Capitalists do not want visiting diplomats or businessmen to be insulted or threatened because of their skin colour.

The Ku-Klux-Klan, with its lunatic mumbo-jumbo, with its Imperial Wizards, Exalted Cyclops, Klokards, Klokams and Nighthawks, to quote just a few, its passwords, bloodoaths and burning crosses, sound like an exaggerated form of such harmless but futile organisations as the Freemasons and the Buffalo’s.

Except that its purpose is terrorism. It is amazing that anyone should take it seriously, but the grim fact is that in its hey-day its membership ran into millions. Its childish costumes and antics make it sound like a schoolboy game or a joke, but it was no joke to the victims of its obscene brutality.

Based on an organisation that arose in the bitter aftermath of the American Civil War, and which flourished for only about three years during the Reconstruction period before being disbanded, the KKK was resurrected in the early years of this century.

Anti; foreigners, Jews. Catholics and Negroes, it appealed to the worst prejudices and the ignorance of the American working class. From time to time it has ridden on waves of hysteria to national importance, but most of the time its power has been more local. In the I930's it added Communists and “labour agitators” to its list of victims.

The progress of the Klan has been marked by a trail of misery. Murder, mutilation, flogging and branding have been amongst its methods, and although its end is probably in sight, as the time-bombs of Alabama show, it looks like making a bloody exit.

Slings and Arrows: “Qui s’ecuse, s’accuse” (1952)

The Slings and Arrows column from the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Qui s’ecuse, s’accuse”

The return of the Dean of Canterbury from his recent visit to Peking has aroused an outburst of fury from the Press. Enormous quantities of newsprint have been devoted to the publication and denial of the germ warfare charges made against the Allied forces in Korea. While we have no doubt that both the Allies and the Chinese or any other warring power in the capitalist world would not hesitate to use germ warfare if it suited their interests, we would say that the Dean has not made out his case on sound evidence. We are not, however, concerned with taking up the cudgels on behalf of the Allied powers. They have quite enough apologists without our joining their ranks. What does interest us is the fact that those who drop atom bombs, and Napalm bombs, and indulge in the most fiendish forms of mass destruction, hold up their hands in such pious horror and appear in the white sheet of innocence. Is burning a Korean peasant by a bomb which is so speedy in its action that he retains in death the last postures of his life any better than dropping bacteria on him? Why does the Chinese Government and their supporters make such vehement protests against the use of infected missiles? Is it because they have been outsmarted in their search for effective weapons? Note that neither side has anything to say, other than the usual pious platitudes, about war itself, and note also that though the Chinese Government are alleged to have established Socialism, or, to use the latest fashionable term, “people’s democracy,” they say nothing about the causes of war. Of course, the allies talk about the “rule of law ” and “freedom and democracy,” in order to justify themselves. In the welter of charges and countercharges we may be sure of one thing. Both sides are concerned with maintaining or improving their position in the world of Capitalism.

No Room at the Inn

When Marx wrote that “the Church of England would sooner give up 38 of its 39 principles than one thirty-ninth of its income,” he was not indulging in mere rhetoric. The Daily Express (15.7.52), reporting a case of eviction relates how the family spent the night in a church, and although they refused to leave when asked to do so, church officials took no action. It appears that the householder had been the church sexton and occupied a house that went with the job. When he was unable through ill health to continue working he was asked to vacate his house. Having nowhere to go he did not comply and the Vicar applied for possession in the Courts. This was granted and with all the ruthlessness of a profit-making capitalist, he called in the bailiffs, evicted the family, and in his desire to show Christian Charity allowed them to sleep unmolested in the church. Non-socialists may be surprised that the Church should behave in such a callous manner. We are not. Acquainted as we are with the Church’s defence of Capitalism and its constant affirmation of the “sacred rights” of private property, this behaviour neither shocks nor amazes us. In spite of the high-sounding platitudes with which Bishops and their ilk sermonise, the Church has ever been in the forefront in defence of the prevailing system. It imitates with faithful accuracy the actions of those in whose interests it functions. And so, when they say to an ex-employee, “You are unable to work for us. so on to the streets with you,” they are being quite consistent, and behaving as all capitalist institutions do.

Who Supports Who?

In a debate in the House of Lords on the Housing Bill, Lord Silkin, former member of the Labour Government, observed that he was alarmed at the growth in the amount of subsidies and then went on to say that the position would arise where “90 per cent. of the people would be housed at other’s expense.” (Manchester Guardian, 15.7.52.) Why should Lord Silkin be disturbed at this prospect? Was it not part of his Party’s policy to “redistribute” income. As it has been established by indisputable figures that a small minority of people own the lion’s share of the national wealth, surely here was Lord Silkin’s opportunity to see in this housing subsidy a means of carrying out Labour’s policy. But he does not see things in this light. He says that it is a “National and not a Party problem.” Thus does he betray the fact that the Labour Party is merely another political organisation pledged to the efficient running of Capitalism. If he knew anything at all about Socialism he would realise that at the moment a small minority of people are being kept and subsidised at “other's expense.” If he knew anything at all about economics he would know that subsidies whether for housing or for food are devices introduced to help Capitalism run more smoothly, for the capitalists. It is not by subsidies, great or small, nor by the substitution of government for private ownership that present-day problems will be solved. And this situation where “90 per cent. of the people would be housed at the expense of others ” is hardly likely to arise since those who produce the wealth from which these subsidies are drawn are the very people who are allegedly subsidised.

S.A.

The Dean and the Chop Sticks (1952)

From the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

If we charitably concede that Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, is, as he claims, a devout and peace-loving Christian, filled with loving-kindness for all humanity, anxious to promote happiness and to avoid violence and war, it is only possible to do so on the assumption that he is capable of self-deception and mental blindness to the point of absurdity. This assumption is, however, an easy one, for the Dean’s public utterances over a long period have shown him to be naive almost beyond belief, highly susceptible to flattery, with an unparalleled capacity to be misinformed on the economic and political questions he studies and writes about and a pathetic readiness to believe the most incredible stories without, or against, evidence when once his emotional interest has been aroused. At one time he espoused the currency mumbo-jumbo of the credit creationists, at another he was backing the idea of a communist Britain, with the present monarch at the helm, and as member of the Editorial Board of the communist Daily Worker he was able to square his Christian doctrines with that journal’s barely veiled campaign of national hatred against Americans. He has long sought to reconcile the irreconcilable, by holding that Marxist materialism is compatible with Christian mysticism, though it must be said in excuse that he was in this matter merely a gullible dupe of two-faced communist propaganda. His principal published contribution to political confusion has, of course, been his “Socialist Sixth of the World,” in which, against all evidence, including much that he provides in the book, he maintains that Russian State capitalism is its opposite. Socialism. He easily took in his stride the notion that dictatorship is democratic provided it happens in Russia. In recent times he has been active in trying to show why the Russian war preparations and glorification of the weapons of destruction are quite different from identical manifestations in other countries, and has achieved particular prominence by proclaiming his belief in the Russo-Chinese Governments’ propaganda about germ warfare in Korea and China.

Here let us clear the air by stating the obvious about the use of germ warfare. Governments at war—all governments —will use any weapon that they think will help them to gain the ascendancy over their opponents. The Dean would doubtless assent to this general proposition, but with the exception that he does not believe this of the Russian government and its allies because they say they are peace lovers. To which, of course, there is a brutally simple answer, For what purpose does the Dean think the Russian government makes atom bombs if not for the purpose of using them?

The Dean is equally naive about war propaganda. Words are a weapon of war, used to stimulate die home front and weaken the enemy. The truthfulness of the words is irrelevant except that some experts in war propaganda hold the view that propaganda that is built up on some truthful elements is more effective than total untruths.

Among recent efforts of the propagandists of Russia and her satellites have been the Colorado beetles said to have been dropped by American planes beyond the Iron Curtain to destroy the potato crop, the dropping of poisoned food in Albania, British poisoned cannon balls in the Crimean War of a century ago, and alleged dropping of lepers by British troops into' North Korea. Bv contrast, the Daily Worker's horror at the sending of “savage dogs” from Britain was a puny effort. The only story that has really justified its use is that of the germ-infected flies and fleas said to have been showered down on the Koreans and Chinese. The Dean believes this to be true mainly because it is vouched for by certain Christian bodies in China, and though he can, it seems, stomach all the horrors of war waged by “conventional ” weapons he cannot condone germs.

Since we know that all governments when at war will stop at no horror, the most pertinent point made by the Dean’s opponents is that researches into germ warfare by Western Powers have produced nothing likely to be at all effective. This—if true—would carry more weight than all the denials, and as it happens the Dean confirms this. He denies that the germs alleged to have been dropped have had any appreciable effect because a simple remedy has been evolved. He told a Press Conference on 8th July “how the little Chinese, when germs had been dropped, formed sanitary cordons in the fields and went about 'collecting the germs with chop sticks’ and popping them into bottles.” (Manchester Guardian, 9th July, 1952.)

So effective is this that, according to the Dean, “the direct effect of germ warfare will be a rapid lowering of the mortality rate with consequent rise in population.”

The logic of his conclusion is perhaps open to question since lowering the mortality rate due to germs can hardly increase the population, unless indeed the children also collect germ-laden insects native to the countryside as well as those dropped by planes; but the Dean’s belief is clear.

If, therefore, we are to believe the Dean his course is obvious. He should now open a campaign for the abolition of dangerous weapons like rifles, artillery, tanks, high explosive bombs, etc., etc., and get the governments to agree to fight wars only with germs. “ The germ, the whole germ and nothing but the germ.” Then, with our issue of chopsticks and bottles we shall all be safe and sound in a third world war and shall all live to bless the Dean of Canterbury.

One other aspect of the battle of the germ deserves notice. His fellow Christians in Britain have denounced his lack of patriotism and sorrowed over his absence of any critical faculty that would deter him from accepting statements on trust even from fellow Christians in China. But why should anyone expect a Dean, nurtured in the bosom of the Christian church, to be able dispassionately to weigh the evidence of what is alleged to have happened this year in the Far East? Are not all Christians taught to accept on faith astonishing stories of wonders and miracles supposed to have taken place in the Middle East nearly 2,000 years ago?

Edgar Hardcastle

So They Say: Surplus to Requirements (1975)

The So They Say Column from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Surplus to Requirements

The pollution free oil tanker is with us. The ships, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are already in existence and extend in some cases to well over 250,000 dead weight tonnage. Furthermore the increase in world tonnage of the VLCCs is estimated to be 1 million tons per week from the present time to the end of 1977, unless immediate cancellations of orders are made. And why should such cancellations be made? — it is the same reason as that behind their being pollution free — the ships cannot be used.

The disastrous slump in demand for big tanker capacity which has dozens of 150,000-ton and 250,000-ton vessels laid up in moorings from the Hebrides to the Pacific, is no temporary aberration, the report (by one of Britain’s major oil companies) says. It will not reach bottom, even on an optimistic assumption on oil usage until 1979 or 1980.

Sunday Times, 15th June 75.

H. P. Drewery (Shipping Consultants) estimated in March that up to 40 million tons of oil tanker tonnage could be laid up by the end of 1975 (Shipping Statistics & Economics) and the writers of the recent report recommend that every VLCC “on order from the world’s shipyards — apart from those actually now being built — should be cancelled immediately” in order to avoid a “surplus to requirements” tonnage in excess of 110 millions by 1980.

So we have it: the classic solution to the classic problem. While the prospects for profit were good the owners rushed capital into the field, each desperate to claim as large a share of the market as possible, now the market is glutted they have a problem — there are no more profits to be found. The Sunday Times on 18th May referred to this “boom and bust” phenomenon as a “grotesque reversal of normality,” but we would disagree. Given the capitalist’s jungle there is nothing unusual here; What is to be condemned is that the jungle still exists.

A Sordid Indictment

The recent case of the fatal virus disease, Lassa Fever, brought into Britain has caused the authorities to build a “Close security laboratory” at the Microbiological Research Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, to study the disease. This wing will also attempt to learn more about other similar diseases for which there are no known antidotes. The laboratory was formally opened on 9th May by its director Professor Robert Harris who said at the time:

Smallpox is child’s play when handling Lassa fever virus. There is no immunization and so people working with the agents are to some extent on their own.

Times, 10th May 1975.

It is certainly a tribute to the determination of science through the individual workers on the project that they are prepared to run such risks in order to overcome a potentially serious hazard to the health of others, but things are not so straightforward in class society. The newspaper report continued :

Asked about the possible military significance, Professor Harris said the question whether Lassa fever would make a good biological weapon depended on how much people wanted to commit suicide.

It is a sordid indictment of capitalism when medical men have to be asked if their researches might prove valuable for warfare. The journalist who asked the question cannot be accused of any personal perversity — if he had not asked it he would be failing in his (limited) function to find facts, or at least, newsprint. It reaches further when we consider that Professor Harris’ team would also be failing in their jobs should they refuse to make their findings known to the masters of the laboratory — the Ministry of Defence.

Not Important

The following piece appeared in the London Evening Standard on 5th June:

Technology and resources exist to produce enough food to supply developing countries up to the year 2000 and possibly for a generation beyond, Mr. Walter Pawley, director of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation said in Toronto.

“But,” he added “if you ask me whether I think production will in fact increase in accordance with the resources and technological possibilities, I must say I am pessimistic.''

It warranted 1½" of type. So much for these “united” nations.

The Capitalist Disease

J. B. Priestley the author had some profound comments to make in the Sunday Times of 15th June. Writing in the Opinion column he relieved himself of a stream of ill-reasoned verbiage. His topic was the “English Disease” — an imaginary ailment which Priestley, along with other self-righteous “thinkers” attribute to the English working class.

I mean English not British, because I am not prepared to discuss the problems of the Scots and the Welsh. (As for the Ulster folk, too many of them refuse to come out of the 17th Century.)

Although he fails to define the nature of the disease, the inference is clearly made that the English simply don’t work hard enough. His solution? — Self discipline.

In times gone by, he argues, the English (good table-thumping stuff this) were disciplined by circumstance. This he defines as “grim hard facts (which) shaped their lives.” We take it that he means working class poverty. But not any more however:

If they are slack and lazy, nobody is telling them to clear out and starve.

In his anxiety to point a finger at the offenders, without in turn offending the “decent” folk among whom he classes himself, he picks upon "the younger set.”

They are not on the way to self discipline, ready to transform themselves into sensible reliable citizens. Their freedom only entangles them with whims and fancies, silliness and self-indulgence. And it is largely they who are responsible for that malaise, that English disease . . .

We allow for the possibility that Priestley has entered the seventh age of man, but he really should be prepared to read other copy apart from his own. On page 53 of the same newspaper we leave the realms of fiction and return to the “grim hard facts” of capitalism. The following is the first paragraph from the article “Is your child heading for the dole?”

During the next few weeks 500,000 British school-leavers will get their first taste of working life. For a record number of them this will mean going straight to the end of a dole queue. When unemployment rises, the young always fare the worst. With almost worldwide recession, this summer’s crop of graduates and school-leavers face the least hopeful prospects since before the war.

A prospect guaranteed to be no less severe now that Britain has confirmed its membership of the EEC — an aim supported by “Writers for Europe” among those numbers the prim sage Priestley figured.

Alan D'Arcy

Voice From The Back: Blood money (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood money 

The international arms bazaar has always been a dirty if highly lucrative trade. And Britain, despite the hypocritical stance currently adopted by the Foreign Office, has never been slow to sell lethal hardware to warring foreigners if the price was right . . . To that end, the Ministry of Defence’s commercial offshoot, Defence Export Services Organisation, produced a global survey in 1998—the year after Labour came to power—identifying existing and potential customers and their future requirements. While paying lip-service to New Labour’s stated aim of “ethical arms exports”, the strategic survey rules out few of the world’s rogue states as possible clients. Libya, Syria and Iraq are still not welcome. For the moment at least. Chile, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, all of which have appalling human rights records, are well quoted . . . Malaysia is another client. It has cash aplenty and it serves as a counterbalance to Indonesia. The arms race allows the UK to quite literally make a killing and keep some kind of bloody order in its perceived spheres of influence. The Herald, 9 September.

A plague on both your houses 

The truth is, both superpowers have decided to embark on a biological weapons arms race with incalculable consequences. The Russians, accomplished cheats on biological warfare disarmament, have been pursuing offensive research on smallpox for years. The Americans, who know only too well of this Russian deception, feel obliged to pursue defensive measures. But compounding the mutual suspicions is one essential truth in the grim world of plague wars research—the line between defensive and offensive is invisible. Western Australian, 19 June.

A fair day’s cop-out 

This year, the Bunbury [Australia] RSL is proud to honour the men of the Merchant Marines who served their countries so well during the world wars. It is sadly true to say that they have not received the recognition and thanks that has accrued to the members of the military forces that relied so much on their efforts. The men of the British Merchant Navy (30,000 of whom fell victim to the U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by exposure in the cruel northern oceans) were quite as certainly front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their Australian, American, Dutch, Norwegian or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any memorial . . . under British law, when a ship was sunk, the obligation of the shipowner to pay the crew’s wages went with it. Bunbury Herald, 20 April 1998.

Counting our blessings 

In Britain, the richest 10 percent enjoy, on average, seven times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in Russia the difference is 40-fold, with devastating effects on people’s health. Guardian, 18 August.

Divide and rule 

One of communism’s greatest paradoxes was its attitude towards the workers. The official doctrine held them as the ruling class. However, in daily life they were treated with contempt and were the victims of numerous abuses. It took the events of August 1980 to shatter the false image of the workers and show their true nature as people willing to fight for the freedoms and rights of workers and of the whole of society. Following that experience, the bond of co-operation between the intelligentsia and the working class was born. It was exactly that bond that gave great power to the Solidarity movement . . . The death knell of this bond came in the form of the collapse of the communist system and more specifically the extremely liberal method of reforming the economy. Very quickly these reforms brought on great financial disparities. To some extent this stratification could not have been avoided in a market economy, but in Poland these changes became so extreme that they ruined the former social cohesion. Over 90 percent of society living quite modestly will continue to pay taxes at an unchanged level. Meanwhile, the tiny group of the most affluent will see their taxes fall by 4 percent from 40 to 36 percent. The effects of the decrease in budgetary intake will be felt by those earning the least . . . Solidarity’s great drama is that 10 years after its triumph it takes care of the wealthiest few and has truncheons and rubber bullets for those who demand bread and work. Wprost Weekly (Polish language paper), 4 July.

The Meaning of Disarmament. (1929)

From the July 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the numerous claims and promises made by the various parties in the recent election those relating to peace and disarmament held a prominent place. During the last War, representatives of the Liberal, Labour and Tory parties held office in coalition and assumed responsibility for making the machinery of warfare as efficient as possible. They now have just sufficient contempt for the memories and intelligence of their supporters to ask them to trust them to see that there is no more war.

The emptiness of their claims and promises, however, is enhanced by recent developments in the art of warfare. The aeroplane and the chemical factory threaten to render all previous weapons obsolete. In the issue of “International Conciliation” for March, 1929 (Carnegie Endowment, 44, Portland St., Worcs., Mass., U.S.A.), sufficient evidence is provided to show that even the wholesale scrapping of armies and navies, as hitherto under­ stood, along with tanks, battleships and other special forms of armament, would still leave in the hands of the master-class means of destruction more deadly than any yet developed. This particular issue is entitled, “Chemical Warfare—its Possibilities and Probabilities,” and treats the whole subject historically and scientifically with a minimum of sentiment and an entire absence of sensationalism. The authorities for statements made are, in the main, responsible chemical and military experts, with no obvious axe to grind in scaring the populations of the world at large.

Chemical methods of attack and defence are not in themselves new. Stink bombs were used in the Middle Ages and were apparently such terrible things that an Austrian chemist suggested that “Christians should only use them against Turks and unbelievers.” Even the Greeks used pots of pitch and sulphur for smoking out their enemies. Modern science and the development of Capitalist industry have, however, increased the effectiveness of this arm beyond recognition. In fact, it is (iironically enough) upon the basis of the tragic experiences of the workers engaged in the mining and chemical industries that the knowledge of the war-time value of certain gases has been established; and it was the advanced state of these industries in Germany (not some peculiar Hunnishness) which enabled and impelled the German military command to use this knowledge. Needless to add that, in spite of Hague Conventions, the Allies were not slow in imitation.

It is this close relationship between chemical warfare and normal peace-time industry, coupled with the slight distinc­tion between a commercial aeroplane and one adapted to military requirements, which reduces all talk of disarmament under Capitalism to sheer childish prattle. According to Brigadier-General Lord Thomson, Air Minister in the British Government:—

  “The next war will be fought in the air, it will consist of aeroplane raids above the great cities, and the primary attack will be against civilians, including women and children.

  Against these incendiary, explosive and poison gas bombs will be used. No defence that has as yet been devised will prevent the death of thousands of persons in any city thus attacked, and the organised life of any great metropolitan centre would be brought to a standstill for days and weeks.“ (p. 130.)

The High Cost of Killing.

During December, 1928, Dr. Hilton Ira Jones announced, in Chicago, the discovery of a new poison more deadly than any heretofore known, called cacodylisacyanide.

 “War, he said, will never again be fought with shot and shell. It is so much cheaper to destroy life wholesale with this new gas. It may be manufactured at the rate of thousands of tons a day, and it costs much less than powder and cannon—yet it will destroy armies more quickly and effectively. “ (p. 140.)

In face of these developments, the workers may well ask themselves what safeguards they possess from the potential horrors of another war. So far, none of the Governments have proposed the abolition of chemical factories and aeroplanes, and judging by past experiences, their scraps of paper hold good only so long as it suits the convenience of the contracting parties to observe their provisions.

The author of the pamphlet goes so far as to make the statement on page 125, that, “Statesmen will always be powerless unless the people are awakened.” She has not yet grasped the simple fact that the reverse is true, i.e., that the power of “statesmen” rests upon the political ignorance and passivity of the major portion of the “people,” the working class.

Warfare is in fact the supreme expression of the power of the modern State, and only when the workers conquer that power can they hope to put an end to warfare.

It is just here, at the crucial point, that the pamphlet fails. The author appreciates and emphasises the fact that technical disarmament is impossible in any complete sense, e.g., “the very fundamentals of our civilisation—coal, salt, air, etc., can produce poison gases” (p. 181), but can only suggest “the peaceful settlement of international disputes” (p. 189). She never attempts to deal with the causes of these disputes, or show how they are capable of peaceful settlement.

Modern states exist because of the conflict of interests in modern society. This conflict is due to the capitalist ownership of the economic resources of society. The international capitalist class is divided into competing groups endeavouring to secure control of the raw materials, trade routes and markets of the world. The most powerful of these groups use the machinery of the various States as weapons in the struggle. Two factors enable them to do this : their control of the States in question, backed up by the unconscious political support of the workers in the various countries.

It is not only in conflict with each other, however, that the capitalist groups are pre­pared to use lethal weapons. In all these conflicts they sacrifice the lives of the workers, and it is against the workers in the last resort that the modern States are armed.

The workers are a propertyless class, and constitute a standing menace to the security of property.

The State is the guardian of the interests of property against the producers.

Among the “peace-time” uses of poison gases the author mentions the following : “Tear gases, such as chloracetophenone, can be used on mobs, escaping jailbirds and other trouble-stirring individuals” (p. 180), thus clearly recognising that it is against its own subjects, as well as against external enemies, that the State needs arms.

The solution of the conflict lies not with an amorphous “people” but with a working-class, organised to emancipate itself, internationally. In the place of capitalism, with its economic chaos and political strife, it will establish a social order based upon the common ownership of the means of life and their democratic control in the interests of a class-less community.

Eric Boden

Emptying the sea by bucket (1957)

From the May 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

For those misguided people who like going in for marches, demonstrations, signing petitions and lobbying M.P.s. Capitalism sees to it that they are kept busy, even if they achieve nothing.

The fact is there is so much wrong, so many objectionable things taking place all the time, that the marching enthusiasts are bound to miss quite a lot. Apart from this they suffer from two fatal faults, first the objects of their marching are only effects and do not touch the fundamental cause, secondly, the fundamental cause being the class ownership of the means of production, marching is not the way to remove it.

It must not be taken from the above that demonstrations can serve no purpose of importance to the working-class. As a means of rallying support for wage claims, drawing attention to grievances and mustering a certain amount of solidarity during strikes they are useful. But we are concerned here purely with demonstrations as a means of altering the course of capitalism or eradicating one at a time the problems which arise because of capitalism; even in the sphere of wages etc., the effect is short-lived for the conflict between exploiter and exploited goes on interminably and will do so until the exploited understand Socialism.

One of the many things which happen every day under capitalism was the announcement that plans are being made to make troops carry a drug kit to infect themselves against “the latest poison gases” (Daily Express, January 30th, 1957). How are the reform marchers to approach this particular piece of capitalism's ugliness? It is their way to take it in isolation from the system as a whole, this is the reformist approach to everything, i.e., to seek solutions within capitalism, to housing problems, high rents, redundancy, slumps, poverty and wars each on its own without bothering to find out that all the problems have a common cause and can only be solved not bit by bit, but altogether, by the removal of this cause. Faced with the drug kit as an isolated proposition, would they march for it or against it or would there be a division in their ranks—some marching for, some against? Considering the proposition more closely we find these are the points to be taken into account. First, there is no challenge to the existence of capitalism, so they all accept the need for armies. Then, since it is a fact that nerve gases have been stockpiled, which do they prefer, troops to go unprotected against these deadly gases or do they submit to the need for soldiers to carry "a dangerous dose of the drug belladona?” Of course, outraged by our criticism, our marching reformers might shout “ban the gases and the drugs” (there’s a nice slogan for them), but what of the efforts to ban the "A” and "H” bombs? The turbulent sea of capitalism floods in upon them. If this or that weapon were "banned” there is no way of guaranteeing it would not be used, for the politicians who can "justify” their production can surely "justify” their use on any number of pretences. And even without “A” and “H” bombs and nerve gases the workers of the world could have a glorious time slaughtering each other by millions with "conventional” weapons of all kinds.

Within capitalism what can be done? The answer is bluntly that, squirm as they may, while the world remains under the present system, the workers will continue to bear the brunt of it.

While cancer and polio research still rely on voluntary contributions, scientists like Penny are designing "H” bombs, and Dr. H. Cullumbins, one of the chief scientists of the Chemical Defence Station at Parton, had this to say about the effects of the drug injections: "A large proportion of the men may collapse and the military efficiency of the remainder may be negligible, especially in hot conditions. But that is preferable to death from nerve gas poisoning."

From our standpoint as Socialists, taking the interests of the world working-class as our guide, there is no proposition which simply involves re-arranging capitalism that can make one arrangement "preferable" to another. Whatever the arrangement, the workers are going to continue being exploited for the profit of an idle class, insecurity will continue to be the lot of the useful, crises will continue to arise while commodity production, world markets and profits remain, and wars with all this bestiality will continue to arise. It therefore remains that the one object of any real use that the world's workers should devote their efforts to, is the establishment of Socialism. This means they must understand that capitalism cannot be made to work in their interests by adjustments here and there. From this understanding they must build the political organisation to send delegates to Parliament for the task of making the means of production common-property so that society can then proceed from this basis of a classless world to organise production for use and eliminate all wasteful and harmful production, so that mankind in peace eternal be able to enjoy the fruits of their labours to the full.

Harry Baldwin

NHS priorities (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the National Health Service has suffered as a result of reduced expenditure. District health authorities have closed wards and reduced services to stay within their dwindling budgets.

These cuts in income have led to announcements that a further 3,500 beds will be closed to the public as hospital administrators are ordered to clear existing debts before the implementation of the government's changes to the NHS that begin in April (Guardian, 26 January).

Despite the government's attempts to reduce the politically embarrassing waiting list for treatment of a million people this has continued to grow. North East Thames regional health authority with the worst waiting list, for its size, in the country has found an answer to the difficulty in reducing its huge waiting list: in the future certain categories of patients will be prevented from joining the queue.

There have been informal restrictions for some time and it is claimed that a million operations have been cancelled in the last three years (Radio 4, 4 February). Screening for cancer could save an estimated 1,250 deaths a year by the end of the decade but the programme may have to be curtailed in some areas because surgeons are unable to cope with the extra work that would be involved (Guardian, 31 January). The women most affected by breast cancer who could be helped by the screening are in the 55-69 age group and, from capitalism's point of view, at the end of their economic usefulness.

The operations for which it is now difficult to even join a waiting list tend to affect people’s well-being rather than their ability to work. These operations are still available privately for those who have the means to pay. But the poor will have to live with uncomfortable disabilities.

In January the NHS was provided with more money to open beds for certain categories of patients—casualties from the Gulf War. Some districts have opened beds which had remained closed due to underfunding from previous years. Professor Angus McGrouther, head of surgery at University College Hospital, London, has stated that the NHS is fully prepared for the chemical injuries, burns or conventional war wounds that may arise from the Gulf War (Daily Telegraph, 28 January). These type of injuries are not new to British hospitals. There were many burns and war wounds sustained during the Falklands' War and victims of chemical weapons from the Iran-lraq war in the 1980's. The chemical disaster at Bhopal also provided grim experience of chemical poisoning on a large scale.

The effects of sulphur mustard gas are well-documented as it was extensively used by both British and German armies during the First World War. The continuous development of chemical and biological weapons in Britain has enabled knowledge to be accumulated, and provides deadly materials ready for offensive use.

War casualties
Two psychiatric patients have been staying in a doctor's office at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, because of a shortage of beds. A hospital spokesman, while denying that this was a result of accommodation being set aside for war casualties, stated: "It was thought appropriate to create additional space" (Guardian, 28 January).

At a time when the government is urging workers to settle for smaller wage increases. members of the armed forces have been offered a 12.2 percent increase to encourage them to kill others and risk being killed themselves for oil and profits. Nurses have been offered a 9.2 percent pay rise instead of the expected 6-7.5 percent. Student nurses have even been offered 11 percent. This is because nursing skills are going to be in short supply if the expected 500 casualties a day start to arrive from the Gulf War. The government cannot afford to have a repeat of the strike action taken by North Manchester General Hospital's night nurses in January 1988.

Security in British hospitals has been increased on the advice of the Ministry of Defence and employees are being issued with identity passes. There have been an increasing number of assaults on patients and staff in recent years but attempts by nurses’ unions to obtain better security have been largely disregarded. The Gulf War has changed all that and money has been found very quickly.

Although poverty is the cause of the greater degree of ill-health and premature deaths suffered by the working class the NHS does help relieve some of the misery of illness. The resources to run an efficient health service are available as the response to the Gulf War has shown. The preservation of workers' health in a recession is not important under capitalism because there is always a supply of unemployed labour which can be used to maintain production. But keeping workers in uniform fit enough to kill those who have temporarily been designated as “enemies” is. The provision of beds to assist in the prosecution of a war for oil and profits while the rest of the NHS is slowly being dismantled shows capitalism’s anti-working-class priorities.

Carl Pinel

Hi-tech horror (1983)

Book Review from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Andrew Wilson: The Disarmer's Handbook of Military Technology and Organisation (Penguin. 1983).

The NATO “dual track" decision of December 1979 to deploy ground launched cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe as a political response to continued Russian deployment of SS-20s was soon followed by the British government's decision to replace Polaris with the Trident C-4 missile. This theatre nuclear force modernisation programme, coupled with strategic systems modernisation programmes in the United States, marked a disturbing escalation of the arms race. In addition, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the election of Ronald Reagan seemed to confirm the emergence of a new Cold War. These events forced many people to question their acceptance of the concept of nuclear "‘deterrence" — one being Andrew Wilson. Defence Correspondent of the Observer for sixteen years. The Disarmer’s Handbook of Military Technology and Organisation is the product of his change of heart.

The book may be divided into three sections; the first deals with theories of war; the second with military technology itself, including nuclear, conventional, chemical and biological warfare; and the latter part with efforts aimed at halting and reversing the arms race.

In the chapter on the theory and history of war there is an outline of the thinking of modern theoreticians such as Clausewitz, A.T. Mahan and Herman Kahn. It was Kahn in his book On Thermonuclear War, mentioned by Wilson, who outlined ways in which nuclear weapons could be used in crises or wars to effect tolerable outcomes. Kahn's book appeared in I960, but it was by no means the first articulation of a theory or doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons in war. US targeting plans of the 1940s. such as “Dropshot" formulated in 1949, called for the delivery of atomic weapons against Russian industrial and military centres. In referring to “counterforce", Wilson notes that it began in 1980, but qualifies this statement by referring to McNamara's “no cities" doctrine of the early 1960s in which it might be possible to limit damage to the US by concentrating nuclear strikes on military targets. But ''counterforce" targeting had always been a part of United States strategic doctrine.

Wilson devotes some space to Marx and Engels, especially the latter’s writings on military science. It was not for nothing that Engels was known to his contemporaries as "The General". It is, however, not true to say that Marx and Engels “turned to military science as a means of establishing the ‘revolutionary state’ after the failure of the barricades" (p. 23). Although in the 1840s Marx thought that a revolution could only result from violent insurrection, he and Engels had completely changed their view by the end of the century. For example, writing in the 1895 Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France, Engels noted, "Let us have no illusions about it: a real victory of an insurrection over the military in street fighting, a victory as between two armies, is one of the rarest exceptions . . . even where the military are in the minority, the superiority of better equipment and training, of single leadership, of the planned employment of the military forces and of discipline makes itself felt"

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

The nuclear arms race has continued unabated since 1945, as has the conventional arms race the world over. In 1947 the US had only thirteen atomic bombs; the most recent estimate of world nuclear weapon stockpiles is 50,000 but since the nuclear arms race is more than just a numbers game, or what the Americans would call a "bean count", Wilson attempts to outline the qualitative differences between the American and Russian forces. For instance, the Russians lag behind he Americans in warhead miniaturisation and microelectronics. Intangible factors such as warhead accuracy and overall system reliability and performance are more important than mere quantity. The key to the whole system is the durability of command, control, communication and intelligence systems, which is a factor that Wilson does not really deal with at all.

It is not unusual to come across widely diverging estimates of weapons characteristics, or widely exaggerated estimates of weapon systems performance. For instance, data about Russian nuclear forces comes primarily from US intelligence estimates, hardly an impartial source. In Britain there has been no official announcement about the number of warheads on the new Chevaline warhead for the Polaris missiles. Andrew Wilson estimates that the number could be as high eight (p. 66). Other estimates have come up with numbers as low as two and as high as six.

The chapter on “Sick War — Chemical and Biological" makes clear that nuclear warfare is not the only form of potential mass murder. In describing chemical agents and their effects, such as the nerve gas Sarin and 2,4-D a defoliant, Wilson highlights the possibility of destroying not only people but whole ecological systems without any assistance from nuclear weapons — a factor which tends to be forgotten by the peace movement.

The Disarmer’s Handbook is aimed primarily at the resurgent peace movement. Although it provides a useful collection of technical details as well as notes on further reading, its conclusion is not one with which socialists agree. For example, in the Postscript Wilson writes:

  Spontaneous demonstrations of popular feeling — in Central Park or Bonn or at Greenham Common — are one element, and an indispensable one, of the process needed to bring governments to action.

How this is supposed to square with the evidence in the preceding chapters, such as the failures of disarmament, the technological momentum which propels the arms race and the causes of war, is not made clear. The military hardware described in the book bears adequate testimony to the horrific society in which we all live, and that is the book's main achievement.

John Walker

The Review Column: Robert Kennedy (1968)

The Review Column from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Kennedy

One of the more remarkable things about the assassination of Robert Kennedy was the emotional identification with the dead man on this side of the Atlantic.

This was more than a matter of sorrow at the Kennedys’ tragic history; it was more than awe at the family’s glamour. Robert Kennedy was mourned as one who stood for the poor and underprivileged, for racial integration and a more humane society. He was venerated as a rich man who cared deeply for the common people.

Was this true or false?

Kennedy was first and foremost a politician—one who drove ruthlessly for the top. It is no new thing, for a man on the march to power to speak up for the underdog; the British Labour government, to give only one example, is full of such people.

This is the true perspective on the famous Kennedy crusade. The simple fact is that they have always played for votes; when Martin Luther King was arrested at a crucial moment in the 1960 election, the late President Kennedy did not judge the matter on grounds of Negro interests but on how many coloured votes he could swing by taking King’s side, and whether they would be enough to make it worth while.

Similarly, Robert Kennedy provoked much hatred— perhaps also that of his alleged assassin—by championing Israeli interests in the Middle East. This was a direct bid for the Jewish vote, both in the Californian primary election and in the vital state of New York which Kennedy represented in the Senate. 

The dead man’s record in office is no more sympathetic. In September 1961 he warned that America was prepared to use nuclear weapons. When the Berlin wall went up he favoured a military confrontation with the Russians. As he himself admitted, he was once a hawk over Vietnam.

On these, and many other, issues Robert Kennedy was not on the side of the common man; he was standing strongly for the interests of American capitalism, even if the lives of millions were at stake.

The assassination was a horrible and frightening affair but so is the capitalist system Kennedy stood for. His was just a single life; capitalism has killed millions.


Germs at Porton Down

The recent protests at the Ministry of Defence germ and gas warfare laboratory at Porton Down have had one rather surprising result. As if to show us that there is nothing harmful going on there, the plant will hold a number of open days, when we shall all be able to see as much of what the scientists are up to as the government thinks fit

Perhaps we shall be encouraged to make a day of it— take the family for an outing on a cheap excursion from one of the nationalised transport undertakings, picnic under the shadows of menacingly blank windows, take home a souvenir test tube of anthrax or botulism.

Very few people will be taken in by the open days. When they are shown the vaccines against disease which Porton Down produces, they will probably reflect that such results are inevitable. The laboratory was set up for one primary purpose—research into methods of waging war by administering gas and disease.

At the moment the likelihood is that gas and germ warfare has too may practical difficulties. So, at one time, did the nuclear bomb. We may be sure that Porton Down is working on the problem.

One obvious characteristic of biological warfare is that is would kill people without damaging property. To the capitalist class, who always find the destruction of modern war such a problem, this is a great advantage. It is enough of an incentive to keep the retorts at Porton Down bubbling until they come up with a weapon which can be used—and which will probably defy belief for its horror.

And this—this waste of human knowledge and skill and inventiveness, this preoccupation with the techniques of mass killing—is what modern capitalism has come to.

What a way to celebrate

Even those who have lost their illusions about the TUC must have been surprised at the way that professedly working class body celebrated its centenary last month.

In London, they held a great banquet, which could hardly be called a salute to the memory of the men who suffered so much to establish the right of combination. Even more, the banquet was devoured at the Guildhall which, as much as any building can, stands for the durable fortunes of the British capitalist class.

In the chair was the Lord Mayor of London, who did not come to his office by way of martyrdom but who is elected by a few other very rich men, mainly financiers and merchants.

Along the top table were the Prime Minister and Barbara Castle, both of whom are busily carrying on the anti-working class policies which the Labour government has followed since it took office and which the TUC has never seriously resisted.

Also there were the top representatives of the employers, officials of the Confederation of British Industry like John Davies. With the exception of George Woodcock, this lot were all got up in evening dress and the whole gathering glowed with ribbons and sparkled with jewels and medals.

Of course such an event would not have been complete without the Queen and she also was present; in fact the trade unionists and business men had only a narrow escape from having her husband there as well.

The Queen made a speech—a sort of primary school exercise on the history of the unions, loaded with whitewash about the callous persecution of the early unionists, hinting that it was all a misunderstanding and that the employers were on our side all along.

Anyone who could witness this without actually being sick might have wondered what the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their contemporaries would have made of it all. But the TUC has come a long way in a hundred years, even if it is in a direction never dreamed of by the pioneers.