"Nothing new" (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealthy charity worker Elisabeth Symonds agrees with Prime Minister Bob Hawke that Australia is a two-class society.

Mrs Symonds, who lives in a multi-million dollar eastern suburbs home, said the rich had now established themselves on their own plateau.

“I don’t see how it can be otherwise”, she said.

“I don’t think Australia is unique. Anywhere you can think of in the world, it is like this.”

Her comments were echoed by Salvation Army spokesman, Major Neville Brooks.

“There have been two classes for a long, long time”, he said.

“It is a natural outcome of a democratic society to have this polarisation of wealth.

“The only thing is there are a lot more people struggling to survive.”

Major Brooks called for more relief for the “strugglers”, saying Australia had never had so many poor people since the Depression.

“Our experience is homelessness is increasing because of the rise in the cost of dirt and the battle with interest rates”, he said

Daily Mirror, Sydney, 20 March 1989

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

After This Crisis . . . ? (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world capitalist economic and political system is in crisis. The signs are so obvious that the mere statement of fact is almost superfluous. The system is beset by not one crisis but several crises. These are separate entities, but inter-related and from the same root cause.

The three major economic problems for all industrialized countries, and the primary producing countries of the so-called Third World, are: inflation, the five-fold increase in oil prices since 1973, and a recession. If the previous cycles of commerce ending in slumps could be referred to as capitalism’s “anarchy of production”, the present situation is chaos. A few press headlines from a single day, 7th September 1975, bear witness to this.

Japanese Bankruptcies at a Peak.

Inflation Rises in U.S.

French Reflation Scorned.

TUC Expecting Autumn Reflation to Cut Jobless.

The “French reflation” was the proposed use of £3,300 million by the French government to try to stimulate the economy, and the dissatisfaction was expressed by the trade union movement and others. M. Georges Seguy of the CGT, the Communist-dominated trade-union organization, said the plan did not alter “the disastrous situation in which our country finds itself”. The French "Socialist” Party said the plan "did not meet needs on employment and prices”.

The TUC’s hope was voiced at the recent conference in Blackpool where a majority had decided in favour of the Labour Government’s £6-a-week wage-restraint policy — a condition of acceptance being the expectation of measures to bring down unemployment. Len Murray, the TUC General Secretary, said that backing the wages policy would “make it easier for the Chancellor to start judicious and selective measures to reflate the economy . . . We shall be looking for action this Autumn to project jobs.” (His word was “project”, not “protect”!)

Trade-union leaders and politicians are, of course, whistling in the dark. The Labour government’s efforts to create jobs are as unrealistic as its other attempts to control capitalism. A sizeable proportion of the unemployed are young people who have been unable to find jobs since they left school last July. In a recent speech in Edinburgh, Edward Heath spoke of a danger that disillusioned youngsters might reject political democracy if the problem were not solved.

Laid Off

Earlier last year, in the writer’s experience, workmates and fellow trade-unionists were not over-concerned at the situation. Something was wrong, there were problems, but things would sort themselves out. The same attitude was found in the audiences at Socialist Party meetings. Now it is different. People up the road are being laid off, “shaken out”, and “surplus to requirements”. Examples in South London are the closure of Decca Radar at Battersea, due to the decline in the sales of colour TV, and the proposed shut-down of the Telephone Manufacturing Company at West Dulwich.

The latter is due chiefly to the cut-back in Post Office orders. The Company’s work is to be centralized at an existing factory in Wiltshire. Two larger companies are also affected by the Post Office cut-back: Plessey’s and the General Electric Company, with 20,000 predicted additions to the numbers of unemployed. In the case of TMC the redundancies include many West Indians and Asians from the Brixton, Herne Hill and Croydon areas. Some long-service employees are jobless: the writer knows one who has been with the Company since he left school in 1938.

The editorials and city columns are full of strident talk about “overmanning”, lack of “mobility of labour”, and “natural wastage”. The writers (employees themselves, of course, and presumably members of the National Union of Journalists) wish other workers to travel obediently at a moment’s notice. This insistence on a “Have tools, will travel” outlook appears only when it suits — or seems to suit — capitalism. Perhaps the ideal situation would be an “Unemployed Disposal Unit” into which workers and their dependants could be fed when not required.

There have been numerous comparisons with the crisis of 1931. There are two economic phenomena from the past which haunt capitalism — the German inflation of 1923 and the “Wall Street Crash” of 1929. At the Durham Miners’ Rally last summer Harold Wilson said we were “facing the worst recession since the 1930s, because the world was in the midst of the most serious decline in trade for over forty years”. We have a slump — because we have a slump!

The President of Australian Council of Trade Unions, Bob Hawke, stated at the CTU Conference in Melbourne that Australia “faced an economic crisis unprecedented since the 1930s”; and “the entire Western world was in a state of economic crisis, and it was naive to blame the Labour government for Australia’s economic difficulties”. (Hawke is also the federal president of the Australian Labour Party.)

Comparison with the nineteen-thirties is interesting in more ways than one. It is not only that the scale of the present recession is the most widespread since that period, but that the proposed solutions are remarkably similar. At the TUC conference, what was most noticeable was the sheer poverty of ideas. The so-called “left”, arguing against the £6-a-week policy, said it would intensify the depression by further reducing workers’ purchasing power: bigger wage increases would increase the workers’ ability to buy goods and services and so make things better.

This is a variant of the simplistic theory that crises occur because the working class cannot buy back what it has produced. Of course it is true that the workers cannot buy the total product of their labour: not only during a depression, however, but at all other times, including periods of expansion and “recovery”. Marx dealt with this in Capital, Volume 2:

  [that the workers] receiving too small a portion of their own product, and the evil would be remedied by giving them a larger share of it, or raising their wages, we should reply that crises are precisely always preceded by a period in which wages rise generally, and the working class actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption. From the point of view of simple commonsense, such a period should rather remove a crisis.

Once a slump is under way, things happen cumulatively. Workers are laid off, their purchasing power decreases, and a chain reaction sets in affecting other industries and other workers. Simultaneously, this helps promote the capitalists’ “loss of confidence” and their cut-back in investment. But the idea that the situation can be remedied by advancing wages is unrealistic. This is unpalatable for Socialists to state, and workers often resent it, but it cannot be ignored.

Searching for Answers

Equally dangerous, but more reactionary, are the continual calls for import controls. This type of economic nationalism in the nineteen-thirties produced restrictions and counter-restrictions, tariffs and further tariffs. The slump and attempted national solutions at the expense of other capitalist states was a contributory factor to dictatorship in countries particularly "hemmed in” by these policies.

There are still demands for further nationalization as the supposed cure for the problems produced by capitalism. This is happening in sections of the motorcar industry. Such is the magnitude of the recession that Coventry, a centre of car production, has been transformed within a couple of years from a high-employment and high-wage area into one with unemployment figures comparable with the depressed areas of Northern Ireland and North-east England. According to the Sunday Telegraph (10th September 1975) car production has fallen to 44 per cent. of its capacity, and studies conducted by McKinsey & Co. (American management consultants) estimate that a further cut of 25 per cent. is necessary ‘“to ensure a profitable future” for the industry.

Part of the objection to the government’s putting money into the Chrysler company was that it would prejudice the recovery of Leyland. The McKinsey report blames “overmanning” and low productivity for the problems of the car industry, and of course this is the cry with regard to British capitalism generally. The proposition is that if only British workers were as profitably employed as workers in other countries — “our competitors” — all would be well. The flaw in this analysis is the recession and high unemployment in those other countries: the Japanese bankruptcies mentioned earlier, the 8 million unemployed in the United States, the numbers in Germany and France.

Under the heading ‘“Shipyards fight undercutting” the Daily Telegraph (2nd October 1975) had a report:

  The desperate hunt for new orders is leading European shipbuilders being undercut by Far East yards that are trying to tempt British and other shipping companies to give them contracts.

It went on:

  The slump in international trade means there is vast over-capacity in shipbuilding, with the bulk of it in Japan and the emerging nations such as South Korea. Japanese yards fear they will be down to only 25 per cent capacity in about two years’ time, and have been pressing for Government help to retain their 50 per cent share of world shipbuilding.

  Now European shipbuilders are starting to urge the Common Market to draw up a shipbuilding policy that will thwart the Japanese ideas.

It must be obvious that neither low productivity nor high productivity in capitalist society is the answer.

Frank Simpkins

Running Commentary: Being prepared (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Being prepared

Ignoring the persistent evidence from the by-elections, the Labour Party is doggedly drawing up its plans to be the next government of British capitalism.

They are well aware that every government faces the difficulty of holding back pay rises. Past Labour administrations have tried to do this through exhortation, threats, legal controls and financial sanctions. Their policies have often brought them into spectacular conflict with the workers and sometimes with the unions as well.

Each time they are in opposition they claim to have learned from these experiences. Never again, they swear, will they attempt a frontal assault on workers' living standards; in future they will organise prosperity for everyone through wage restraint with the unions’ agreement, a peaceable surrender without a shot being fired or an angry word spoken at the Despatch Box.

Harold Wilson called one example of this tactic the Social Contract and the implied promise to bring order into wage negotiations where once there had been fractious chaos helped him back to power. Of course things didn’t work out as Wilson had promised and his successor Callaghan had to muddle through the winter of discontent.

But despite these grim memories, Labour is undaunted. They have a liaison committee with the TUC which has recently negotiated an agreement on wage control with the principal unions. It is all there in a working paper and the policy is called, not the Social Contract any more, but the National Economic Assessment.

This latest piece of trickery promises to give the unions new “rights" while emphasising their “responsibilities” to take account in their claims of economic priorities as identified by the National Economic Assessment.

In simpler terms, this means the unions would agree to hold back their claims if they conflicted with the priorities of a future Labour government. And no one can now be in any doubt about what those priorities are — a more profitable British industry, more competitive British exports, a more intense exploitation of British workers.

Out of office, and looking very unlikely to be in power again for a very long time, the Labour Party is still laying its plans to run British capitalism. Their problem, as ever, is that although this can be done in only one way — in the interests of the British capitalist class — it must be made to look as if it will benefit everyone


Jolly Swagman

If Barry Humphries got it right, Australia is a place populated by excessively bone-headed, obsessively macho sports. And if that is true the well-publicised reputation of their new Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, as a one-time bibulous, roistering womaniser may have helped him win the recent general election. Votes have been cast, and elections won, on flimsier grounds.

But more to the point was probably Hawke's promise to attend to the problems of the Australian economy with policies which would unify the people there. Australia is no longer a golden land of opportunity, beckoning to British workers exhausted by the exploitation and the weather and mistakenly believing that all their troubles would vaporise under the Australian sun. Unemployment there now stands at ten per cent and prices are rising sharply. For the Australian worker, life gets harder and harder.

Hawke’s predecessor, Malcolm Fraser, was a Prime Minister in the Thatcher mould. He did himself no good by imposing a wages pause without consulting the trade unions or trying to win their co-operation.

As we all know from experience, Labour governments aim to do it differently. While it is their object also to keep wages in check they at first negotiate on this with the unions. If they get an agreement, it is usually given some deceptive name like Harold Wilson’s Social Contract, which is supposed to convince us that frozen wages under a Labour government are less icy than the same thing under the Tories.

Bob Hawke, who came up through the trade union movement in Australia, will quickly use his experience and standing to get the unions' compliance in wage restraint. The Australian workers will be told that this is in their interests because, of course, a Labour government would not have it any other way.

Another example of the style in which Hawke will "unify” the country was his statement that the Prince and Princess of Wales will be given a dignified welcome when their imminent visit to Australia takes place. These two parasites personify the dominant class in a grievously divided society; they stand for privilege above the majority’s poverty. To welcome them is to condone a disunited society.

Like all Labour leaders. Hawke came in on a wave of optimism and on the prayer that things will be better hereafter. He has made an unusually rapid start in exposing these hopes for the futilities that they are.

Best forgotten

In the city of dreaming spires, a raging controversy disturbs statuesque scholars at their books. Was Michael Heseltine, when he was a student at Oxford in 1954, a supporter of the campaign to ban the hydrogen bomb? If he was it could be highly embarrassing to the man who now has the job of putting the government case against CND.

According to the Guardian, everybody who was anybody at Oxford at the time was in the campaign. Historian Raphael Samuel, who was then secretary of the university Communist club, says that Heseltine was more than just a member of the committee against the H bomb — he drafted the petition opposing the bomb and was scorned as a stooge of Moscow as a result.

Jeremy Isaacs, who so benefited from his time at Oxford that he now masterminds the production of drivel on Channel 4, says Heseltine attended a meeting but refused any further involvement. Tory MP Julian Critchley does not remember the future Defence Secretary being involved.

And Heseltine himself? "I really don't recall . . .” he said. “If the petition called for multilateral disarmament, well we are all in favour of that."

This problem with the Defence Secretary's memory is unsettling. He is, after all, the politician responsible for the nuclear warheads and delivery systems which have gone on growing worse and worse in spite of all those protests from angry undergraduates. We don't want him ordering them to be fired off in a spasm of absent-mindedness.

But Heseltine's forgetfulness is also understandable. It is common for people who are interested in reforming capitalism rather than abolishing it to become zealous about all manner of causes and campaigns. There is no lack to choose from: nuclear weapons, war, famine, poverty, dictatorships. massacres, demands to free some people and to lock others up . . . 

No self-respecting reformist refuses an invitation to sign up in support of such causes, unheedful of the fact that this is a waste of time which could be contributed to the struggle to abolish the root cause of all the problems.

And of course much of this zeal is expended at universities, where there is youthful energy associated with adolescent delusions about possessing élite intellectual qualities. It is quite understandable, that among all that excitement they should fail to remember every campaign they put their name to, and how and when and why.

If Heseltine was against the bomb in 1954, it need not disturb him now when he wants to keep it. Both attitudes are indefensible and both are best forgotten in favour of the idea of a basic change in society.

Double Act

The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act is a misnomer because it does not prevent terrorism and. since it has lasted for nearly ten years, begins to look anything but temporary. So unsuccessful is the Act in stopping terrorism (which means guerilla acts committed by the other side) that, according to Home Secretary Whitelaw, 1982 was a very bad year for bomb incidents in England. So untemporary are its provisions that Whitelaw intends to introduce another Bill to replace the present Act — and presumably to give it permanence.

In the recent debate on renewing the Act for another year the Labour Party were quite clear that it is an assault on civil liberty. Whitelaw’s shadow Roy Hattersley protested about the harassment of Irish people which the Act encourages — “. . . part of a movement towards a more authoritarian society. That move is wrong in principle, and as far as combatting terrorism is concerned, wrong in practice".

Labour MP Reg Freeson weighed in with his description of the Act: “. . . the very kind that political terrorists in this country or any other wish to see a democratic state give way to”.

There is of course some validity to these arguments; for example the Act allows the police to arrest and to hold suspects for long periods without charging them or bringing them into a public court. According to Hattersley, some 85 per cent of those arrested and held under the Act are released without being charged.

But the points were just as valid in 1974, when the Act was rushed through parliament in the hysterical aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings. It was no less a threat to personal liberty, no less a political weapon for the IRA, then than it is now.

The only thing to have changed is the party which is in power. It was a Labour government, with a “liberal", "civilised” Home Secretary in Roy Jenkins, which passed the Act and which had it renewed each year until they lost power in 1979. In those days Hattersley felt able to vote for the Act.

In the case of Freeson there may well be another motivation. His constituency has a large number of Irish voters and he is under some pressure in reselection. And of course when they are out of power the Labour Party has always felt free to criticise many of the measures which they took when they were the government.

This latest squalid manoeuvre may win Labour a few votes from workers who are ignorant about where their interests lie. For the likes of Hattersley and Freeson, that is justification enough.