Running Commentary: Catch ’em young (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Catch ’em young

Everyone knows that all state schools are short of resources. Strathclyde Regional Council have found a way to alleviate the problem. Following in the footsteps of national and local press, programmes for charity, sports events or whatever, they are selling advertising space in the exercise books used by their 422,000 schoolchildren. For 500,000 books. £2.250 will buy the back page, inside covers are slightly cheaper, and a bargain £5,400 buys all three covers and a logo on the front.

Of course, not just any advert is accepted. Cigarettes, alcohol, sweets and BMX bikes are out. (So, we are sure, would be The Socialist Party or The Socialist Standard). Road safety and health education are in. So far, so good. "We also want to encourage thrift" said the Head of Public Relations and to this end they have approached banks and building societies.

The report appears in Super Marketing 11 July 1986. It is therefore no surprise to read a little further on that Lyons Tetley are "very happy with results" of their pilot scheme, which was "very cost effective" and intend to take further space. Of course, using exercise books in school at £2,250 a throw to persuade half a million mums to send their offspring to school filled up with Ready Brek is obviously a lot cheaper than those TV commercials where kids light their way through the fog with their Ready Brek induced halos. What better way to condition the workers of tomorrow to be receptive to the siren calls of consumerism — and after all, without those advertisements there mightn't be any exercise books . . .

More on poverty

In the August Socialist Standard we pointed out that at that time the last published official figures for people living at or below the government's poverty line were based on a count taken in 1981. Another count had been taken in 1983 and this should have been published last year but the government were prudently delaying this.

Just as that Socialist Standard was produced the later figures became available; in fact they were placed in the library of the House of Commons, just as the library conveniently closed for the summer. However, details have seeped out and are not comfortable reading for those who think that life in Britain under the Tories is as happy and abundant as we were promised it would be. when the alleged monetarists were let loose in Whitehall.

In 1981, the official figures showed 7.7 million living on or below the poverty line; by 1983 this had risen to 8.8 million. A House of Commons library estimate is that by 1986 this total has risen again, to 11.7 million

This comes at a time when the Child Poverty Action Group are celebrating — or perhaps it should be mourning — their 21st birthday Formed under another name in 1965. at the time they did not bother to arrange to bank any funds because they were sure that their campaign to abolish child poverty would succeed within one year A lot of their hopes rested in the election of the 1964 Labour government, of which one Labour MP (Frank Field, Guardian, 4 August 1986) now says: "At the end of the 1964-70 Labour Government the charge was that the poor had got poorer under Labour' ". The CPAG soon learned a little about the reality of working class poverty and what Labour governments are in power for By the end of their first year they had opened a bank account and had changed themselves from an advisory group into an action group.

Like so many apparently well-intentioned reformist bodies. CPAG have probed, exposed and agitated. But, typically, they overlooked the fact that working class poverty is basic and unavoidable under capitalism, whichever party is in power. When they were formed in 1965 there were less than 400,000 people living on Supplementary Benefit; now there are some thing like eight million dependent on it. The numbers out of work, grappling with the increased burden of poverty which unemployment brings, has risen during this time from 330,000 to over three million.

Working class poverty cannot be dealt with by piecemeal reforms, treated as if it were separate from the other problems produced by capitalism. The facts point to the irresistible conclusion, that the CPAG has devoted a lot of energy and a lot of ingenuity to raising hopes only for them to be clashed against harsh reality. It would have been better for them to have assessed the true nature of the problem they were facing and then campaigned for the abolition of the cause of poverty. For if capitalism is allowed by its poverty-stricken people to continue there will still be a CPAG, or its equivalent, in another 21 years time. And another. And another.

South American headache

"One of our team's first problems there was what to do with almost 100 orphaned children who had been trained in torture. Their speciality was pulling out eyes". These chilling words by Dr Nacho Maldonado Allende. psychoanalyst and co-ordinator of an international team of mental health workers in Nicaragua are reported in the June/July issue of Open Mind, journal of the National Association for Mental Health.

Getting across basic elements of mental health care in Nicaragua is a much more primitive and elementary matter than even the disgracefully inadequate facilities in this country allow. The team exchanged ideas and shared knowledge with the local peasants they were training, rather than trying to impose professional expertise. Alcoholism is a problem in Nicaragua as almost everywhere else. When asked what should be done about it. the locals replied "Do nothing. We are deprived and for the moment we need it to help us ". If they paused to work it out, workless, homeless and at times hungry workers in Glasgow. Belfast and Birmingham would give the same reply.

Dr Allende's team found many Nicaraguans suffering from what he described as "frozen grief". People who had. for instance, suffered the loss of a close relative, appeared cheerful but their suppressed sorrow and frustration surfaced in headaches, insomnia, numbed limbs.

While there are degrees of deprivation and suppression, workers throughout the world face the same problems of capitalism. Those who dispute this might well ask themselves the real reason the next time they suffer a headache or sleepless night.

Running Commentary: Myths of equality (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Myths of equality

Do not believe the common myth that we are no longer living in a class-divided society. Class is not about being “classy”. It is not something you can take on or reject. While there is still the institution of property in human society we are all born into families who either do or do not possess it. The Low Pay Unit has just produced Low Pay Review 4, which shows that the lowest paid workers today are relatively worse off than the lowest paid in 1886, when figures were first collected. More wealth is produced today than a century ago, but those who are born to no property and are therefore forced to go out and work, producing that wealth, now receive proportionately less of it.

Mr. Chris Pond, director of the Low Pay Unit, comments: “The government’s assertion that workers could protect their jobs by cutting wages is a cruel deception. It is in those industries in which wages have fallen furthest, precisely because of the reduction in demand for the goods and services produced, that have faced the biggest job losses” (Guardian, 2/6/81). And do not forget the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, which reported in 1979 (after five years of Labour government) that the richest one per cent in Britain own more wealth than the poorer eighty per cent.

Against this background, which is based on a minority class owning stocks and shares and other property, and deriving a vast unearned income from employing the rest of us, the “European Socialists” tell us to pull in our belts still further. On 28 April this year, an Amsterdam conference of the “Socialist International” agreed unanimously that “the time had come to promote wage controls firmly linked to economic democracy” (Guardian, 29/4/81).

Are you trying to escape from this wage-slavery which is imposed upon us? The Pearl Assurance Company has recently been advertising what they call the Capital Accumulator Plan. Basically, this means workers struggling to save up their hard-earned cash for them to spend on a few trinkets just before they die. We can be sure than Pearl shareholders, among others, will be profiting from the process.

But don’t they know there is a far more reliable “Capital Accumulator Plan”? It works like this. You inherit a few million pounds (be sure to choose the right parents) or, perhaps rob a few banks (be sure not to be caught and incarcerated). Then you employ (exploit) a few thousand workers (who chose the wrong parents) and accumulate a few million more. At the moment, there are dozens of annual Company reports being published which illustrate the process. Just take one example. Mothcrcare. Profit after tax: £8,634,000. Earnings per share: 13.39p. Dividends per share: 5p. Mr. S. Zilkha and Mr. E. Zilkha, both on the Board, have between them 11,478,776 shares. Their dividend will be £573,938.80. Their earnings will be £1,537,008. They are not employees, they are owners. They do not produce, they possess. “Profit per employee” is declared to be £4,422 for the year. Each worker, then, was paid just enough to keep them fit to work, and produced about as much again on top for the benefit of their masters. That is what is known as “Civilisation”.

Take power

The Child Poverty Action Group has produced a report. Poor and Powerless, showing how the gas or electricity is being cut off in more than 770 households each day because the families concerned cannot afford to pay the bills. This is in spite of the fuel industry’s Code of Practice introduced in 1976 supposedly to reduce the hardship of those very people. The reductions in the real value of child benefit, unemployment benefit, sickness and industrial injury, and maternity benefits together with cuts in the real value of wages, have contributed to worsen the situation since the onset of depression, For example, [ . . . ] disconnected 37,648 people last year, more than three times as many as in 1978. The report quotes particular cases, such as one low-paid family of six children, one of whom had just been discharged from hospital after a bone marrow operation, who were cut off for a gas debt of £17.

The piecemeal suggestions of the CPAG, such as forcing the fuel industries to obtain court orders for such cases, or raising benefits to low-income families, will not remove the problem. As long as people are dependent on employers or the state for a meagre income, poverty will remain an integral aspect of society. Only in a classless society, where everything is owned in common, and resources are freely available to all, will we be able to feel properly secure. As long as the profit system is retained, workers’ living standards will be cut down to the minimum that the employers can get away with it.

American fuel companies have a mechanism called a service limiter adapter. In most parts of America, it is illegal to cut off consumers’ power supplies, so they have found this simple way round it. The adapter can reduce the supply in varying degrees, so that particular appliances cease to function one by one. One New York official has said: “The great attraction is that defaulters face an uncomfortable time without lives being put at risk in freezing weather conditions”.

Sick society

The Office of Health Economics have reported that work days lost through sickness for March 1981 are 21 per cent below the average for the same month over the past four years. The drop coincides with a one million rise in unemployment and the report suggests that high unemployment has made people so afraid of losing their jobs that they may be going to work even when ill.

If not, however, perhaps they can become ill once they get there. The CBI, the Chemical Industries Association and the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries have mounted a vigorous campaign against proposed regulations to protect workers from dangerous chemicals. Section Six of the Health and Safety at Work Act, if it is passed, would prescribe the testing of certain chemicals used in industry, such as Dioxin, used in pesticides, which causes miscarriages and deformed births. “Tightening controls will involve the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in added cost, and this is the core of their objection” (Guardian, 10/8/81). In a confidential memo to members in June, the CBI stated: “CBI is likely to challenge the philosophy underlying the new controls . . . Industry has consistently opposed over-regulation and unnecessary bureaucratic controls by governments in the field of harmful substances”.

In a society of common ownership, production would be solely to satisfy human needs, and not for the profit of a minority. Under democratic control, work can become a pleasure in itself. But when it is owned and controlled by the likes of the CBI, the slogan is wealth before health.

Housing

Speaking of wealth, the Daily Mail did an interesting profile of Michael Heseltine on 17 July. It showed how the man who was sent to Liverpool to work out for his Prime Minister the puzzle of why people living in slums are frustrated, has four houses himself. One in Belgravia, worth £600,000, a country estate in Oxfordshire worth £750,000, a £100,000 “hideaway” in Exford, and a smaller place in Swansea, “not for personal occupation”.

He took some of his fellow capitalists on a bus-trip round Liverpool to see how the other sort live, and to work out how to buy off their discontent. The same issue of the Daily Mail reported on the court case involving Per Hegard, the “man who could buy everything”. His ownership of several companies allows him to live off the work of thousands, riding on their misery. He has six Rolls Royce cars, three yachts, two jet planes, half a dozen mansions and a £15,000 cigar bill.

Those who work to create Hegard wealth for him have least and suffer most, and it is in defence of the property of such people that millions die in wars fought over the control of markets; and his grasping need for profit causes pollution, industrial danger, poverty, destruction and waste.

The World Bank's World Development Report for 1981 refers to the millions living and dying in extreme poverty, and contains two predictions, one “optimistic” and the other less so. The optimistic forecast is that by the end of the century the number on the verge of starvation will fall from 750 million to 630 million. On the other hand, they say, it may rise to 850 million. But it is in our hands to make it fall to nought immediately, and to end all poverty and war, if we combine to end the profit system and create a community where wealth is produced freely for direct use according to needs.

Clifford Slapper

Time for a change ! (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

No member of the working class needs to wade through the press or listen to television and radio to realize that living standards have taken a sharp plunge over the last four years.

A reading of Labour’s two manifestos issued for the elections of 1974 shows what has happened to Labour’s attempt to make capitalism work for the benefit of the majority of the people.

Remember how the slogan “Back to Work with Labour” was used as a piece of propaganda against the three-day week, which large sections of industry were working under the Tories prior to the election. The one-and-a-half million unemployed, and thousands of other workers whose jobs are threatened, know that the alternative slogan “Out of Work with Labour” would be far more accurate. In both manifestos there was the inevitable electioneering talk about the need for “social justice.” The Labour Party claimed that this could be achieved under capitalism. It talked of the “need to tackle rising prices”, “to strike at the roots of the worst poverty” and “to make the country demonstrably a much fairer place to live in”.

In the February 1974 Manifesto, Labour pledged itself to “introduce strict PRICE CONTROL on key services and commodities”. Efforts were to be made to stabilize food prices and the use of subsidies was proposed. Significantly, these promises were dropped from the October 1974 Manifesto.

The result of Labour’s attempt to control inflation has of course been an annual inflation rate rising to 26.9 per cent, at its height. At present it is 17.6 per cent. The Labour government has misled some people into believing that it can control rising prices. A Government White Paper issued in July 1975 declared: “By the end of 1976 price increases will be down to less than ten pence in the pound”. However, prices were rising by fifteen pence in the pound at the end of 1976.

What of the Labour Party’s talk of “social justice’ when Lady Beaverbrook can spend £8,000 to charter a special plane to take her two poodles to New York? According to a report published in December 1976 by the Child Poverty Action Group, thirteen million people in this country alone are living close to the Supplementary Benefit level which the government officially recognizes as being a state of poverty.

But the working class will be making a great mistake if they believe that the Tories can do any better. In April 1972, under the Heath government, unemployment passed the one million mark for the first time since 1940. Under the Tories, workers had to put up with wage restraint and rising prices just as under Labour.

The present economic crisis shows that capitalism cannot be controlled. During the boom period of the 1950s, all the major parties, Labour, Conservative, Liberal and “Communist,” were under the illusion that it would be possible for governments to “spend their way out of trouble”. The Socialist Party of Great Britain said at the time that this Keynesian solution to economic and social problems would be doomed to failure because capitalism is an anarchic system which repeatedly passes through boom and slump periods. The history of capitalism over the last two hundred years makes this abundantly clear.

The leading politicians with all their talk of “national unity”, “increasing productivity” and everyone tightening their belts, are bankrupt of ideas. None of them can offer anything to the working class.

It is possible to say that capitalism was once a revolutionizing system which expanded the machinery of wealth creation. However, the twentieth century has shown that capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It is in many cases destroying wealth, and constantly prevents wealth being produced. Fruit and vegetables are regularly ploughed into the ground, factories are closed down with machinery left idle, while millions of workers are unemployed. Privilege continues while there is worldwide poverty. All this for the sake of the great capitalist god, profit, which benefits only a small minority of the population.

What is the alternative to this madness? The case put forward by the Socialist Party of Great Britain is clear and concise. The alternative is Socialism. It involves the democratic ownership and control of the factories, agriculture and wealth-producing and distributing agents by the whole community. Socialism will be a truly worldwide system.

Vincent Otter

Goodbye to the Welfare State . . . as we know it (1998)

From the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As members of the working class living on state benefits are well aware, it is quite impossible to put a little by for a rainy day, for every day is forecast as a downpour, and trying to keep your head out of the deluge is a constant problem. And for those who are wholly dependent on benefits as their only source of income, their whole lifestyle is dictated by their resourcefulness in eking out their pittance from one day to the next. Yet the Labour government is planning to make things worse.

One of the major problems for the Labour government is the ongoing increase in the benefits bill—which this year is approaching £100 billion—accounting for the largest slice of government expenditure. The changes in the NHS and education system, brought about by the Tory administration, were plainly underfunded and have resulted in Labour putting Tory Plan B into effect by instigating a deliberate purge in social security payments to enable them to fund the NHS and education changes set in motion by the previous government. In order to meet these financial targets Blair needs to make savings of around £8 billion on the social security budget.

Scraping the barrel

Alongside this Labour are also faced with the problem of attracting skilled workers back into the workforce should the economy show signs of improving. Why put workers through costly training programmes when there are ample skilled workers already available, albeit suffering ill-health or disability to varying degrees? Far better to meet the demands for a low paid, short-term casual and part-time workforce by scraping the barrel and getting the skilled disabled—specifically those who are suffering less than 65 percent disability—back into the labour market. With 2.8 million people of working age claiming benefits due to ill-health or disability, Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, intends to ensure their amount of benefits does not act a disincentive to them returning to employment.

This explains the emphasis Tony Blair places on “offering the opportunity” to those who are sick and disabled to provide for themselves with “appropriate support”. But such explanations also provide the means for the Blair government to distance itself from the present obligation of “provision of universal benefits for life” to a scenario of capping universal entitlement to incapacity and disability benefits to one, or two years, so that after that period means tested benefits come into operation.

The present Social Security Review is the third since the Beveridge proposals for a two-tier National insurance/national assistance social security system were implemented in 1948, with each review making major changes in “the application of universal entitlement” by a mixture of increased bureaucracy and deterrence through lack of appropriate information, or any help from qualified staff at point of access to enable benefit claimants to actually receive their full entitlement. This is a major reason why one million pensioners fail to apply for the full range of various benefits that are available.

The whole purpose of the two previous reviews was to make substantial cuts in the social security budget. So we should not expect this one to be any different. But another lesson of history, which Labour have failed to learn (and as the present cost of social security amply illustrates), is that the previous reviews proved to be damp squibs when confronted by workers more resolute in keeping their heads above water than meddling politicians or inept bureaucrats.

Blair is bowing to the need to impose austerity measures in response to the global crisis of capitalism and the Maastricht criteria in order to ensure British capitalists are well-placed if and when the upturn in the global economy occurs and for possible entry into the single European currency. Such measures also offer the opportunity of projecting the image of a “reforming government” when plainly they are no such thing, but merely a reorganising (and cutting-back) on past reforms.

It is also hoped to curtail fraud and abuse by developing an integrated computer system for the Employment Service, the DSS, local authorities and the Inland Revenue. Initially this reorganisation will put increased pressure on DSS staff and hinder them in achieving their cost and efficiency targets set at 25 percent savings, and also undoubtedly lead to inevitable delays in claimants’ payments whilst claims are being processed. As for claimants, with delayed payment notorious for the creation of a “crisis period” any further adverse moves will only exacerbate the problems of those caught up in the poverty trap.

Various leaks have suggested which benefits could come under the hammer. For instance, Child Benefit is likely to be limited to under 16-year-olds and also capped for those who earn over £20,000-£30,000 a year. Likewise Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay face the possibility of being capped at the level of £20,000 yearly earnings—resulting in 8.8 percent of claimants of SMP who are currently over that bracket having their disposable income accordingly reduced. Incapacity Benefit could be limited to one or two years, after which those claimants found to be only 65 percent disabled will be encouraged back into the work force by linking them to the means-tested Disability Working Allowance, or something similar. Should this “opportunity” to return to wage slavery found to be wanting no doubt more compelling measures will be used in conjunction with the Job Seekers Allowance. For those in receipt of Severe Disablement Allowance and Industrial Injuries Benefit there is the possibility of both these benefits being amalgamated under a new disability heading and either taxed accordingly, or made an overlapping benefit against other disability benefits.

Since the introduction of policies such as Care in the Community, and with the creation of unitary authorities, many Social Services departments are being hard pressed to meet many of their statutory obligations within their present budgets. This state of affairs has resulted in them considering charging for some of the services they dispense to the mentally and physically disabled. This raises the possibility of claimants currently receiving either the care component for Disability Living Allowance, or if aged over 65, Attendance Allowance, finding they will have to forfeit these particular benefits for receiving local authority care or support. It is also highly likely that both these benefits will, be capped for those earning over £20,000 a year, or taxed as income—and therefore in a roundabout way means-tested—or even for that matter directly means-tested.

The introduction of disablement benefits undoubtedly enabled many recipients to partake in activities which previously had been denied them, especially those who experienced difficulties with mobility. The prospect of this continuing looks bleak for those claiming the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance for it is highly possible that on reaching the age of 65 they can look forward to a life sentence of being housebound with the mobility component being cut from that age.

If such measures are actually put into practice the limited autonomy the disabled presently enjoy will face even further erosion, leading no doubt to an explosion of discontent from the numerous charities and agencies involved with disablement issues, and also from those who were instrumental in obtaining reforms of this nature—in recognition that the needs of the disabled outweigh those of the able-bodied. But with Blair clearly stating that “the welfare state had been left behind by social and economic change”, it is pretty obvious their pleas are going to be met with cynical platitudes from the politicians.

Deterring take-up

Whatever austerity measures are actually imposed on those benefits which presently come under the criteria of “universal entitlement”, the general trend will be towards linking them with some form of means-testing in order to deter the recent high growth in the take-up rate for benefits—especially from the sick and disabled. The high take-up rate for disability benefits in particular proved to be a stumbling block for the Tories, who sought to curb it by installing a stricter medical criteria, and by introducing the Benefit Integrity project which randomly selects 12 percent of claimants for review (this alone is expected to cover 500,000 disability claims) and resulted in 10 percent of those reviewed having their payments cut. Yet despite these and other measures workers have managed to counter them by adopting the realistic attitude of “getting what they can from the system”, and responding in kind with 345,859 new claims for DLA and a further 55,605 new claims for Industrial Injuries Benefit since April.

With a full-blown means test unlikely to become the norm for claiming benefits—for the extra cost of administration would be self-defeating—and with Blair making a point of emphasising that the means-tested safety nets of Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit also face scrutiny, it can be expected that cuts will be implemented on these already meagre handouts. For instance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit could be made applicable to only one person per household—irrespective of whether other members of the household claim Income Support. Alternatively, claimants could be made to pay 20 percent of their rent before Housing Benefit comes into operation. If such measures are adopted it will inevitably mean that means-tested claimants will feel the pinch by being expected to pay a portion of their benefit towards rent.

Socialists argue that all reformist activity is subject to the changing nature of capitalism. To fight the same old welfare reform battles over several decades is demoralising enough, but when previous reforms are put into reverse the case against the system which puts profits before needs is stronger than ever.

Even before Labour won the May election, the Child Poverty Action Group in their Rights Guide to non-means-tested benefits, made a point of forecasting that “Is it naïve of us to hope that our successors(s) as authors of this Guide will have a comprehensive range of non-means-tested benefits to describe here in six years time?” (March 1997.) Frankly with Blair and his ilk locked into the profit system, the Socialist Party can confidently assure the CPAG that their guide for 2003 will be a decidedly slimmer version.

G. Digger

Political Notebook: An old man does not forget (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

An old man does not forget

Harold Macmillan, the Edwardian fop whose languid manner concealed a very sharp political brain, was eighty five years old last month—an occasion marked not just by the usual flood of obsequious congratulations (what’s so clever about a member of the ruling class reaching old age—the real heroes are workers who make it into retirement) but also by a long television interview with none other than Robert McKenzie.

McKenzie, it will be remembered, was playing with his psephological toys when Macmillan was creating history by leading the Tories back to a third victory at the polls. That victory was even more remarkable for the fact that it came a few years after the Conservatives were in disarray after the collapse of Eden’s Suez adventure, which succeeded in pleasing no one in his party.

Macmillan’s technique was essentially simple. First imply—or even, if you are forced to. promise—to do one thing and then, as the realities of capitalism require it, do something else. For example, while he personified all the patriotic nonsense of the heyday of the British Empire, he worked steadily and stealthily to dismantle it.

Like most politicians, he was cursed with an albatross—an unwise statement which probably cost him more support than it won for him. Ever since he said it. Macmillan has been trying to prove that he did not mean that we had never had it so good; on television he pretended to forget who had coined the phrase.

Macmillan succeeded, for a time, by means of openly treating the working class with contempt. And they never resented it. Now, in a winter of deep discontent, Macmillan still does not bother to hide his feelings, holding forth from his sumptuous Sussex home about problems which do not disturb the even tenor of these final days.

As long as it's black

One of the most famous sayings of the original Henry Ford was that of course his customers could choose any colour car they liked as long as it was black. Everyone laughed and bought a black Ford car.

And in a sense that is what is going to happen at the next election. It is a fair bet, that much of the argument between Tory and Labour parties will be about which of them has the more effective method of dealing with the present crisis in British capitalism.

In fact, there is nothing exceptional about this crisis. Every government tries in some way or other to hold down workers’ wages. Since the war, some governments (usually Labour) have succeeded in this for a time, subduing the unions with a mixture of promises and arm twisting.

But this can’t last for ever; workers whose living standards are going down sooner or later begin to notice it—and try to do something about it. And the something must, in the last analysis, be to strike.

Confronted with a situation like this, in the early days of 1974, Edward Heath’s Conservative government accepted a suggestion from the Pay Board (as it then was) to set up something called a Relativities Board. The idea behind this was to pretend that a pay rise conceded to the miners was not really a rise at all—only an ironing out of ‘‘relativities".

This useful and adaptable, piece of jargon is now being used by the Labour government, again to disguise the fact that their attempts to hold down wages are being beaten! Callaghan, apart from offering rises up to ten per cent, is also muttering about a Relativities Board to design ultimate justice for us all.

Nobody should be deceived by this transparent attempt to convince us that there is some enduring solution to our problems under capitalism. Nor by the politicians' mouthings that the parties of capitalism are at odds over the matter.

Thorn or Rose

For some years now one of the sharpest and most uncomfortably barbed thorns in the side of the Labour government has been Frank Field, director of the Child Poverty Action Group.

The CPAG was formed in 1965 to draw attention to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of families living below the poverty line and to demand government action to help them.

So a lot of their work consisted of a detailed, searching analysis of the so-called Welfare State. Their examination of reforms like social security benefits, Family Income Supplements and so on could have done nothing to encourage anyone to believe that such measures hold out hope of any lasting improvement in working class living standards.

Indeed, during the last few months of the previous Labour government — in March 1970 — CPAG presented their findings on Labour’s reforms:

The charge therefore stands: the poor are relatively worse off under a Labour Government.

Field has not allowed any respite to this government: he was at the centre of the row over the leaking of Cabinet minutes which revealed Labour’s intention to postpone the child benefit scheme (a footling reform, hardly worth minuting let alone leaking the things).

Simple souls might assume from all this that Field was an unrelenting opponent of the Labour Party, whose schemes leave the poor relatively worse off than ever. But the politics of reform are not so simple. Field, who in 1966 stood as Labour candidate for the rock like Tory seat in Buckingham South, has had better luck this time—he is Labour candidate for Birkenhead. where the majority in October 1974 was over nine thousand.

No doubt Field has already worked out how he will reconcile his former attacks on the Labour government with his support for them. He must also be hoping that the voters in Birkenhead will not find any problems in swallowing this particularly audacious piece of hypocrisy.

Hardly child's play (1987)

From the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the traditional victims of electioneering, children are among the most heavily abused. Helplessly reined into their prams, they can do little to avoid the leering smiles, the pats and the kisses of vote-hungry candidates. Children as a symbol of purity and innocence are also understood by people in the advertising industry, who don’t go in for elections but for persuading us to kill off our own standards of judgement. What lies behind this propaganda is the warning that while children are attractive they are also hugely vulnerable. They need the Alliance or the Tories, or the Labour Party to protect them or to ensure that their natural protector — the family — is strong enough to do it. The cynicism is obvious but the wretched irony of it is all too often missed: the appeal of children should guarantee them immunity against being used in these ways.

The facts show that the family as it is at present is far from being a reliable protector of children. There is an enormous mountain of child abuse, most of which goes on in the family. The NSPCC estimate that between 150 and 200 children a year are killed through abuse or neglect by their parents or carers. Another estimate is that child battering is the fourth commonest cause of death in the under-fives. There are no official national figures but the NSPCC believe that in England and Wales in 1985 over 9000 children under 15 were physically abused — not counting the other types of maltreatment such as sexual abuse. Stimulated by the publicity given to recent, particularly nasty, cases such as Jasmine Beckford and Tyra Henry, the number of cases reported to the NSPCC has risen sharply— by 42 per cent between 1984 and 1985. When the people responsible for these assaults are prosecuted the media is convulsed by a grisly hysteria of demands for the harshest possible sentence.

Apart from abuse, there is the matter of extreme poverty, from which, of course, the entire family suffers. Last November the Child Poverty Action Group, which was formed on the assumption that campaigning could get rid of the worst excesses of poverty, celebrated its 21st birthday with the news that one third of Britain’s children live in what is officially deemed to be poverty, or at its margins. Apart from those trying to exist on state benefit, the National Children’s Homes state that in 1984 there were 429,000 children in families where the wages were so low that they qualified for the topping up of Family Income Supplement. Overall, it is not a pretty picture, made up as it is of political deceit, social pressures, market morality and ignorance. To understand the problem a bit better, we might consider a few facts about children themselves.

There is a popular concept about childhood which, like most of capitalism's prejudices. is assumed to be too obviously correct to question. Childhood is supposed to be a separate period in our lives when we are too undeveloped to be able to cope with some of the messier aspects of human life — such as sexual activity — and therefore need to be protected and nurtured by grown-ups. In fact, this ’protection" too often amounts to distortion or deceit or concealment, on the assumption that if the child is to develop smoothly into adulthood he or she must be fed on myths and euphemisms. Much of this revolves around prejudices about the fixed roles reserved for each sex and with discouraging children from seeing their parents for what they are — exploited, degraded and repressed objects of class exploitation. But there is nothing fixed or unchanging about this. Childhood is a social concept which varies according to conditions: the present concepts are typical of modern capitalism and are therefore comparatively recent. A new society, with a different basis, will have different — freer, more humane — ideas on the matter.

When children had to work alongside their parents in order that the family survive there was simply no real chance for them to experience this time which is now called childhood. They were regarded as miniature — usually defective — adults who should be punished if they failed to come up to adult standards. With the Industrial Revolution these attitudes were transferred from rural to urban life. Hordes of agricultural workers were sucked from the countryside into the developing towns with their children who were well accustomed to helping out with very demanding work.

Children answered the industrial employers' need for cheap labour and the demands made on them were as fierce as any adult could expect. In pre-industrial England parental attitudes to children had been, by present standards, severe but they did not extend to systematic deliberate sadism and neglect. Child labour took place in the family where the cruelty which was to be commonplace in the mines and factories was unknown. The pace and rhythm of agricultural work had been dictated naturally but in the factories it was the insistent demands of the machinery — which operated whether the sun was up or down and in all seasons — which dragged children from their beds before dawn and kept them at work for twelve hours or more in the most appalling conditions until at the end of the day they collapsed. too exhausted to wash or undress or even to eat. The savagery wreaked on those poor kids, in order to protect the employers' profits, was a horror story of beatings and torture by brutal overseers. Many of those who survived such assaults were brought down by injury or disease caused by the atmosphere in which they laboured.

The parents might have tried to protect their children and very often they did but this called for considerable courage in a family where it was vital that all available children were bringing in a wage. In any case many of the children were orphans or paupers, transported to the new industrial hell-holes. Who cared, or even noticed, whether they suffered and died?

Naturally, if children were treated like adults it followed that they could be punished like them. In 1800 there were no less than 220 offences which could incur the death penalty. Until 1847 the law made no distinction based on age and so children could be — and were — executed for minor thefts or for taking part in public disturbances. For the most trivial matters — throwing stones, knocking on doors, stealing a few turnips from a field — children were imprisoned for years. They might be confined in the rotten, vermin infested hulks and then transported. Reformists tended to prefer a sound flogging for them, on the grounds that this was a humane salvation from the life of unbroken criminality which a prison sentence would assure them.

This situation began to change with legislation making full-time education compulsory. The motives for this were not entirely charitable for as industrial development refined capitalism's class structure it also needed the lower, exploited class to be schooled in new skills through formal, organised education. There was a clash between the demands of the classroom and those of the fields and the factories but in the end the classroom, as it had to, won. One effect of universal education was to raise obedience to the status of a supreme virtue — obedience to god, to the sovereign, to their parents, their betters, all of which amounted to obedience to the class which would eventually accept them into exploitation. The family was important in the business of instilling obedience which became a sort of cement of family relationships. Children were taught to be quiet, meek, well behaved and to grow up into docile wage slaves.

What has happened to children, then, cannot be described as idyllic, under the benevolence of caring adults. Rather, it has been a story of outrageous repression and cruelty, at times in answer to the most extreme demands of an inhumane social system, to be modified only slowly against entrenched opposition based on the narrowest of class interests. Children are still suffering, in this supposedly advanced and civilised age, still easy prey to their elders' frustrations. Child abuse is widely ascribed to the malevolence of a minority of adults, which may be easy and comfortable as an explanation but which misses the essential background to the problem.

There are certain features to be found often enough in child abuse cases for them to be seen as a syndrome so that, in the reverse direction, if some elements of the syndrome are present it is reasonable to fear that a child is being, or will soon be, maltreated. These elements are nothing to do with supposedly evil human beings; they are rooted in social conditions, in the basic inability of capitalism to work to the benefit of the majority of people. Among the symptoms are: where the mother is very young, especially if she is a single parent whose poverty makes her vulnerable to men who come into her life as predators; where two children are born in quick succession to each other, placing an extra physical, emotional and financial strain on the parents; where the child is suffering from a disability or handicap, which again puts more stress on the parents; where one or other of the parents themselves has a history of being abused; where the family income is especially low, so that life is an unremitting battle for access to the barest essentials. The importance of the last element is illuminated by the fact that rich parents can simply buy their way out of at least some of the others. Smug observers of this problem may sometimes assert that it is not a class matter, referring to the infamous brutality practised in public schools and the emotional cruelty suffered by some children in ruling class families. There is some truth in this but it does not refer to the generalised problem, which was pinpointed in the comment of a National Children's Home support worker in Rochdale:

  Families live in damp, sub-standard housing that they can't afford to heat properly. They survive on the basics and there is no comfort. Sometimes the pressures overwhelm them. (Children Today - 1986).

The family which operates today — and the modern concept of childhood — is rooted in the unique historical and social character of capitalism in response to its needs as a private property, commodity production system. There is much bleating, especially from the clergy and from Tory politicians, about the family's role in socialising children and whether it does this successfully. In any social system adults have a vital part to play in a child's life, but under capitalism socialisation is not a matter of guidance into the ability to have caring, happy and fruitful relationships with others and into being themselves good parents. It means fashioning — or rather distorting — children's innocent impulses into conformity with the crushing fact that they will one day have to earn their living. They will one day have to sell their working abilities and through their exploitation help further to enrich their employers. Seeing employment as essential to the emotional integrity of a child is not something peculiar to Victorian England; this is how it is described by another NCH worker:

  Chronic unemployment arrests the young person's debut into adulthood . . . The growing up process remains uncompleted. They are "limbo" people. (George Keenan — Children Today 1986).

So a child's prospects of maturity are still assessed in terms of his or her ability to pull in a wage. Where does the family fit in? The expectation is that the family will teach the difference between ''right'' and "wrong", which substantially means to respect property rights and to accept the class division of society into the privileged owners and the non-privileged workers. In the 1980s trendy parents may laugh with each other at the haltered Victorian obsession with the obedient child; nowadays, they assure themselves, children are stimulated into thinking and acting for themselves. It is true that modern industrial capitalism has changed the emphases in the way it schools its children. But it has not changed the workers' support — through boom and slump, through war and famine — for capitalism. And how can that be described, if not as mindless, inculcated obedience?

If anything marks out childhood it is because many childish impulses, before adults working on behalf of capitalist society get to work on them, are in conflict with capitalism's morality. Children simply have no grasp of property, or class division; these have to be instilled into them. This shrewdness is what is mis-called childish innocence and it is fair game for politicians and advertising people. When the irony and the cynicism becomes widely enough apparent, we shall have taken a step towards a society which will be the family to us all. The next time you see a child grab hold of something which doesn't belong to it, don't smack it. Think instead.

Ivan

Cold Comfort (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A doctor has sent the following two items to us. First, a cutting from the Daily Mirror of 22nd December 1975.

  A thousand babies are doomed to die this winter — because their parents can’t afford the cost of heating their homes. This “slaughter of the innocents” has already begun with the deaths of 212 babies aged less than a year. This is on top of the normal infant mortality rate. The babies are dying of infections caused by the cold — mainly bronchitis and pneumonia, says the charity Child Poverty Action Group, in a report out today. The charity’s director, Mr. Frank Field, said yesterday: “Infant deaths are swinging wildly up . . . Recent huge increases in fuel prices are to blame. Thousands of people can’t afford to heat their homes. Mass disconnections are taking place.”

Second, a letter to the doctor from Beecham Research Laboratories, headed “Hypothermia: A complimentary aid to diagnosis.”

   This potentially fatal condition needs to be identified promptly . . . Many authorities are now calling for the routine use of special wide-range thermometers that operate throughout the hyporthermis and pyrexic range (75°F-105°F). We are very pleased to be able to offer you one of these wide-range thermometers with our compliments, and we are sure it will prove to be of value to you in your practice.

   The elderly also number amongst the patients who are ‘at risk’ from infection. Many doctors have found Magnapen to be particularly well-suited to the treatment of the more worrying infections such as seen in patients with acute-on-chronic bronchitis, cellulitis and otitis media . . . Please sign and return the enclosed reply-paid card and we shall ensure that you receive a wide-range thermometer with additional data on both hypothermia and Magnapen.

The doctor’s note to us says: “It’s an ill wind, isn’t it?”

Poverty Anonymous (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

If it would be wrong to say that poverty is an old friend of the working class, it is certainly a companion from the womb onward.

It is an ignorant delusion to believe that poverty is abolished during booms and times of so-called full employment, and only returns from banishment when there is a slump and unemployment. All the conditions of hardship, misery and deprivation, which are currently receiving so much media coverage, are there all the time. A slump simply makes them more widespread and sharpens the degree of suffering.

Poverty is an inherent part of class society. Under capitalism, the means of wealth production are concentrated into the hands of a minority class, or their state machine (which comes to the same thing). Wealth, the goods and services of society, is produced for sale with a view to profit. The vast majority are employees. By definition, they are propertyless. They must sell their working abilities for wages in order to live. They spend their lives as appendages to the factories, offices, mines and machinery owned by those who employ them. They are hired and fired at the dictate of the world market and the profit margin. They are alienated from life in any meaningful sense of the word. The wealth they are able to obtain, either through wages (if employed) or so-called Social Security (if unemployed or sick) is generally enough to keep them in working order and maintain themselves and families between pay-days.

That there are many workers in “better” paid jobs, who think of themselves as middle-class, in no way changes the basic situation. In fact it often accentuates it.

Poverty leaves a terrible imprint upon all who suffer it. Not only in the physical struggle to get by, but even worse are its mutilating effects on the personality and the mind. There is nothing so brutally pathetic, as a worker with a job who counts his “prosperity” in terms of hard work and rails against other workers who live on social security, without working. Poverty of the mind can be seen in the acceptance by most workers of the perverse ideology of their capitalist masters. It is this which anchors them to capitalism so that the whole ridiculous set-up keeps going.

It is not uncommon to hear workers in this country argue that if places like India, and other starving areas in the world, were brought up to the standard of living in Western Europe “we” would have to make sacrifices. This reflects the capitalist ideology, in that it glibly looks to solutions within capitalism. Whilst it is true that poverty is a relative thing and that the degree of poverty among workers in most of western Europe is not so extreme as that of many people in India, this becomes a convenient argument in favour of workers here being content with their lot.

The real perspective in which to see the issue, is in terms of the technological capacity for world abundance, as against the inhuman, profit-motivated performance of capitalism with its vast wastefulness and destruction (no less so in India). Capitalism subjects modern technology to the strait-jacket of the market. Over-population is one of the absurd myths that help to make capitalism seem plausible. It is sheer humbug to talk of over-population in a system which destroys vast amounts of food each year, or simply does not produce it. As we write, the Daily Mail (20th October 1975) carries a story of nearly a quarter of a million tons of apples destined for destruction, because

 . . . the cost of shipping them to the hungry millions in Asia would be far more than their value.

Nowhere in the world are there any wealthy people starving. But even in the wealthiest countries there are poor people who go hungry.

John Pilger, the well-known and widely-travelled journalist, has seen poverty in many parts of the world. On 28th February 1975 the Daily Mirror carried a report he sent from Detroit. After a brief reference to the American Dream and Henry Ford’s promise to make the workers rich, the report gets down to the ugly realities of capitalism.

At the time of the report there were more than 8,000,000 Americans unemployed. In Detroit, the car industry was at a standstill with 26 per cent, (officially) unemployed. A young unemployed worker who was interviewed said:

  Guys who thought they had it made are now getting a taste of what the poor and the blacks have always had. I’ll say this; when the supplement runs out it won’t be only the blacks who’ll be picking up a brick to get some food.

Government food stamps are regarded as “the badge of poverty”. There are 37 million Americans who qualify. Pilger details a picture of abject poverty. He says:

  In the last three months since the lay-offs began in earnest, the Detroit Health Department has reported 150,000 cases of malnutrition, mostly among women and children.

And further:

  The same food which Washington sends to the starving of India is being sent to the heartland of American industrial wealth: and incredibly, people get this food with a medical prescription marked, in large type, MALNUTRITION.

Six months later, Pilger was in Liverpool and another report appeared in the Daily Mirror (14th August 1975). He interviewed a family who live in a three-year-old block of council “barracks”, where damp has destroyed lino, bedding and clothing. The rent for this unhealthy hole was £9.45 weekly. The breadwinner was unemployed. They were £50 in arrears of rent and had been threatened with eviction. The father, who is up at first light every day following up job ads, said: “Watching my kids pushing down bread and marge just to stop hunger pains is the greatest humiliation.” They were told by those champions of the needy, the so-called Social Security: “You should be more thrifty, you should be less wasteful.”

Pilger goes on to cite a report by the Child Poverty Action Group, showing that 5,000,000 people (in Britain) were spending as little as £1.60 per head each week on food, and this was diminishing. This was at a time when the average amount was £3.46. The penalty for two people being unemployed or sick in July 1974 was to be condemned by the Welfare-State to live on a pittance of 29 per cent. of average earnings. By November this year, it is expected to fall to 27 per cent.

Pilger slates Wilson and Healey, and calls them “jugglers and manipulators”. He says they “have lost all grasp of what is happening to millions of people in this country”. People who buy above-average amounts of baked beans and margarine and less than half the average amounts of butter, meat and fish. People who under a Labour government suffer hunger and among whose children rickets is returning.

Pilger, like the Daily Mirror and the media as a whole, comes to no conclusion. He lamely poses the question: "Where have all the radicals gone?” The “radicals” are those do-gooder reformists who built that supreme political irrelevance the Labour Party. Which, with the support of the Daily Mirror, is currently running British capitalism. The radicals, who were going to “tax the rich out of existence” a generation ago, seem resigned to the “compromise” of starving the poor out of existence. The Labour Party has long been stripped of any pretence of being other than a capitalist party.

Capitalism mocks all who try to tame it. The very morning the Daily Mirror announced 1,000,000 unemployed (25th July 1975) it carried a front page story about the Kleenex tycoon’s wife Roberta Kimberley, who filed a claim for expenses in her divorce case, which included £1,000 per month for food and £300 per month for flowers. Meanwhile, back on the other side of the class jungle, the nationalized (state-capitalist) gas and electricity authorities, with the aid of energy-man Benn, were making various ludicrous suggestions as to how the poor might be enabled to pay their ever-rising gas and electricity bills.

Determined as ever not to learn from history, the “Communist” party, IS, the WRP, the “bad boys” in the Labour party and the trade unions, are busily drumming up the schemes of the moment and proffering useless advice to the government on how to run capitalism — without crises. Poverty, despite all the schemes of the “left” and generations of reform legislation, is as virulent as ever. Socialists have never been deluded that it would be otherwise.

Harry Baldwin

Rear View: Chronic poverty (2019)

The Rear View Column from the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chronic poverty

Marx (Groucho, that is) said: ‘Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.’ The same applies to reformism.

1965: Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) formed.

1997: UK had the highest rate of child poverty in the industrialised world

1999: Blair: ‘Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a twenty-year mission, but I believe it can be done.’

2019: ‘DWP child poverty figures a ‘national scandal’ as 4.1million kids are hit’ (mirror.co.uk, 28 March).

Diagnosis

This ‘problem’ existed long before the CPAG and many other charities came into being and will persist for another 50+ years if we continue to address symptoms rather than the underlying disease. Oscar Wilde expressed this well: ‘their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible’ (The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891). The same Daily Mirror article informs us: ‘The Child Poverty Action Group warned the Tories’ cruel benefit freeze will plunge another 100,000 children into poverty by 2023-24.’ Elsewhere (independent.co.uk, 15 March) we are reminded that parallels with 19th century poverty are not unwarranted. ‘Britain’s poverty crisis has seen children arrive at school with holes in their shoes and worn-out trousers, while some as young as 11 feel they have to work to provide food for their family, headteachers have warned. School leaders are providing clothes, food and sanitary products to disadvantaged pupils.’

Political placebos

Prescriptions and pronouncements from politicians should be treated with the contempt they deserve. ‘Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd admitted the figures were “disappointing”. She told MPs: “I have acknowledged that today’s statistics are disappointing and I am highlighting that there is more to be done, both in terms of other services around benefits and in terms of my engagement with the Chancellor.” She added “no one in government wants to see poverty rise” and “we all came into politics to help people plot a path to a better life”‘ (mirror.co.uk, 28 March). Rudd and the other Mendacious Parasites do not serve us. Indeed, their disdain is often obvious. ‘A group of homeless people were kicked out of public tunnels next to the Houses of Parliament. One man claimed he was told by a police officer that an MP had complained about their presence. Two of the men who had been sleeping in the tunnels to keep warm told the Independent that Metropolitan Police officers ejecting them had cited section four of the Vagrancy Act 1824 – the 19th-century law which criminalises rough sleeping and begging. One man said a police officer had also mentioned clearing the tunnels, which connect Westminster Tube station to an entrance to parliament, “so the MPs can get to work”’ (independent.co.uk, 26 March).

The socialist scalpel

Reformists and MPs, however well intentioned, serve the status quo here in the UK as do their counterparts worldwide. Too many poor? Let us have fairer wages. Only two minutes to midnight? Let the great leaders sign treaties. Are we drowning in plastic? Let us ban drinking straws. No more reformist rhetoric! Reforms can secure social stability: when the rule of capital appears to be under threat the ruling class is ‘only too glad to buy a prolonged armistice at the price of ever-repeated concessions to the working people’ (Engels). Capitalism is a worldwide system of war and want. After hundreds of years of reformism, both the problems of war and poverty, which most people consider to be rather important, are still major problems and are nowhere near solution. Those prescribing continuing medication when radical surgery is needed tell us that it is utopian to seek change which is not slow and gradual. We reply that we are in a hurry; we are not content with the way in which capitalism has been reformed and there are no reforms which could be offered that will distract us from the clear road ahead; we have a world to win and those who will not join us stand in our way.

Poverty Excludes (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We look at different concepts of poverty, at the idea of social exclusion and at how governments have tried and failed to eradicate these.

Poverty need not imply destitution, the situation where a person simply cannot provide for themselves. Many asylum-seekers are forced to survive on £5 a day and so can genuinely be described as destitute, or as in absolute or extreme poverty. An alternative notion is that of relative poverty, living below a poverty line usually defined as a household receiving less than 60 percent of the median household income. Thus in 2011-12, the median household income in the UK was £23,200 (down from £24,100 in 2007-8): 60 percent of this would be £14,460. Naturally, such figures need to be adjusted to take account of differences in terms of family size and the cost of living in different parts of the country. That same year, more than one child in four lived in a household with income below the 60 percent poverty line after housing costs were taken into account. The extent of poverty is also revealed by increases in the numbers resorting to food banks and to petty shoplifting, even from pound stores, and by rises in cases of malnutrition treated in hospitals (over five thousand in 2012).

An alternative approach defines poverty in relation to typical living standards:

  ‘Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong’ (Peter Townsend, quoted from www.cpag.org.uk/content/what-is-poverty).

This is often described as social exclusion: ‘being unable to access the things in life that most people take for granted’ (definition from Age Concern). At the very least this would mean: decent housing which was not overcrowded and which people could afford to heat; eating healthy and nutritious food, without worrying about skimping towards the end of the week and resorting to food banks; buying warm and functional clothes, without relying on hand-me-downs and charity shops; access to good-quality health care; having the chance to perform useful and rewarding work; being able to afford bus and train fares; enjoying some basic leisure activities, such as a trip to the cinema or a day in the country; having an annual holiday that is more than just staying with relatives. Not too much to ask, you might think, given the capabilities of modern society, but in fact beyond the reach of millions.

In his 2010 book Injustice, Daniel Dorling claimed that one-sixth of households in Britain count as poor, with debt as the main problem that prevents them from affording necessities, arguing that ‘People spend and get into debt to maintain their social position not out of envy of the rich, but out of the necessity to maintain self-respect.’ You cannot keep up your self-respect if you truly are excluded from the normal standards of present-day living.

It is sometimes said, not just that the 60 percent figure is arbitrary, but that relative poverty, and the concept of social exclusion too, can give a very false impression, as under them people can still be regarded as poor even if their standard of living is well above that of poor people a generation or two before. And even those who are not destitute may have the use of gadgets and technology that did not even exist a couple of decades ago. If you have a big colour television, the argument goes, how can you be poor? One response is that you can still be socially excluded in the way sketched above; another would be that the comparison should be with the very richest people in society, who have prospered very nicely in spite of the recession; and finally, that the true comparison should be with the possibilities for life in a socialist world.

Reformist governments have of course addressed the problem of poverty. In 1999 Tony Blair proclaimed a commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, but this has not been going well, with the interim target of halving child poverty by 2010-11 being missed. It was only cut by about a third, and even this reduction was partly due to a drop in the median income and hence the poverty line being lower. And as in other areas, government terminology did not quite mean what it appeared to. Just as ‘full employment’ does not imply that everyone who wants a job has one, so ‘eradicating’ child poverty does not mean getting rid of it altogether. Rather, it was intended that fewer than 10 percent of children should live in families below the poverty line.

This specific target, along with others, was enshrined in Labour’s Child Poverty Act of March 2010. The other big parties supported it, though the Tories complained that it tackled the symptoms of poverty rather than the causes. Shortly after the 2010 election, when poverty statistics for 2008-9 were published, Iain Duncan Smith stated:

  Millions of children, adults and pensioners are daily experiencing the crushing disadvantage that poverty brings. They are living at the margins of society, unable to achieve their aspirations and trapped in dependency. … Vast sums of money have been poured into the benefits system over the last decade in an attempt to address poverty, but today’s statistics clearly show that this approach has failed.

The point about dealing with symptoms rather than causes was correct, but that after all is essentially what every government does. The Tory idea of the causes of poverty is also rather different from that of socialists: Duncan Smith later argued that the Labour government ‘did not do enough to make work pay’, though he is of course not suggesting that the Coalition should act to increase wages.

The cause of poverty, however defined, is not that the benefits system encourages  dependency and undermines any ambitions that people have. Nor is it that the tax system penalises those who earn relatively little when they start earning a bit more. The fundamental cause is the way that society is organised, with a small minority owning the means of production and the overwhelming majority forced to sell their labour power for a wage in order to survive. The degree of inequality this gives rise to is scarcely credible: the five richest families in Britain own more wealth then the poorest fifth of the population.

To be more accurate, workers are forced to attempt to sell their labour power, since there will not always be a capitalist in a position to exploit a worker and therefore willing to employ them. Workers may sometimes be able to maintain a reasonable standard of living, while at other times they may be excluded from what is by any criterion a basically acceptable way of life. But we are always excluded from true empowerment over our lives and those of our families – and that is not something that can be achieved under the present social system.

Paul Bennett

Poor Kids (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Minister of State at the Department of Economic Affairs, Peter Shore, is reported to be the author of one of the most embarrassing documents ever written—the 1964 Labour Party election manifesto The New Britain. For his own good we may hope that Shore’s work at the DEA will be sufficiently taxing to take his mind off the many promises made in that programme which have not been kept.

There was, for example, a lot about the alleged failures and cynicism of the Conservatives. Take a look at this:

 . . .  the nagging problems the Tories stupidly (in some cases callously) brushed aside . . .  Social Security benefits which have fallen below the minimum levels of human need . . .

Labour, we were told, would run things differently. They had, after all, come up the hard way; Harold Wilson could remember the kids without any boots, the late Nye Bevan had once made a speech about social priorities and there were even still a few miners among the Labour M.P.s, if they could be sorted out among the keen, smooth, ambitious university graduates.

The first thing to say about what are called—perhaps in jest—social security benefits is that it is nothing new for them to be falling below the minimum levels of human need. Sometimes, indeed, they have been deliberately designed that way. However outraged the tone of Labour’s manifesto, the fact is that no government ever anticipates this situation and actually pays out benefits so far above the minimum levels that they remove the danger of them falling below the level, at least for a very long time.

Instead, governments spend a lot of time investigating the fact that the benefits have fallen in value, producing recommendations to bring them up again and in arguing about whether they can afford to carry out their own recommendations.

This has been the background to every enquiry into social security. But whatever patching up a government may do they never complete the repair—as fast as one hole is plugged another opens up, and then another. No matter how they attempt to distribute the overall poverty of the working class, some section of workers is always in dire need, in conditions which are themselves a problem demanding immediate action.

So it was when Beveridge (assisted by a much younger Harold Wilson) came to the unsurprising conclusion that the scheme which had been operating before the war would be hopelessly inadequate in post-war conditions. So it was as each successive government increased one or other social security payment, hailing each rise as a permanent solution to the poverty problem. So it is now, in Harold Wilson’s heaven.

Today, about one million children in this country are living at a level below the basic National Assistance rates. Over half of these are in homes where the father is in full time employment but has a wage which is too low, or a family which is too big, or both. Many social reformers have been shocked to find out that these conditions exist, because they were supposed to have been abolished by family allowances and the other provisions of the “Welfare State”.

But apart from anything else, the buying power of the allowances has been worn away by the continuous rise in prices. On 13 March last Margaret Herbison (who was then Minister of Social Security) said that to restore the purchasing power of the ten shilling family allowance, for third and subsequent children, to the level it stood at when it was introduced would need an increase to 13/7d.

The government’s answer to this is to increase family allowances—again—by seven shillings for second and subsequent children. This will happen next April; meanwhile a part payment of an extra five shillings is being made for fourth and subsequent children. This is part of what the newspapers like to call a package deal; also in next April, school meals will go up by 6d. a day and welfare milk by 2d. a pint. The government are also considering decreasing the income tax allowance which can be claimed for children; when he announced the higher family allowances in the Commons last July Patrick Gordon Walker said:

  . . . it would be logical, in considering how it should be paid for, to consider, among other things, some adjustment of the income tax allowances which affect families.

The widespread reaction to this package deal was dissatisfaction, especially among those who had assumed that only a Tory government would stoop to imposing increases in the price of welfare foods, cutting education and so on. Margaret Herbison left the government over it, thus removing one of those useful Ministers who build for themselves a reputation for protecting the poor and underprivileged—and who have been known to use this reputation to soothe indignant and disappointed delegates at Labour conferences. Herbison’s colours, however tattered, had been nailed to the mast:

   There is no doubt that children of the low-wage earners are suffering serious deprivation at the present time and we have got to do something about it. (21 November 1966).
   .  .  . every child born should have as its very birthright the opportunity to develop to its full capacity, enjoying the benefits of a good home, education and culture. Where poverty exists, these things are not possible .  .  . (20 April 1967).

It was clear that the protesters were beating themselves against the usual brick wall and we do not have to look far to find the reason. The key to a great deal of Labour’s policy in government is their concern over the level and the direction of investment in industry. This was the motive behind the setting up of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, it is the motive behind much current taxation policy and it is the motive behind the Bill which is now being prepared, which will extend the government’s powers beyond those of the IRC and will give it a stronger hand in allocating and controlling industrial investment. All this will be done in co-operation with private industry. According to The Times of 29 August, over £100 million is likely to be spent when the Bill is passed, including “tens of millions of pounds" towards building an aluminium plant in this country. As good a description of this policy as any was given by Tory leader Edward Heath, in a statement he issued on 2 September, when he advised private industry not to kowtow to the government ".  .  . in order to get money for investment which the Labour government’s taxation makes it impossible to get inside the firm or on the open market.”

What this means is that, no matter what the theories, the desires, the hopes, of Labour supporters, there is only a strictly limited amount of money available for education, welfare foods, family allowances and so on. Within that amount the government have shuffled the figures about — increasing here, cutting there, trying to justify the imposition of a new-style means test—to try to convince everyone that they are doing something about working class problems.

Since most of the participants in the argument over family allowances have made free use of the word poverty, it is as well if we decide what we mean by it. Poverty is simply depending on a wage for a living. When a worker is in employment he may get enough to keep him at a level of poverty at which he can run a car, have a washing machine and hang those abominable strips of plastic curtaining in his doorway. But if for any reason he cannot work, or if his personal circumstances are such that his wage is stretched until it snaps, he finds himself among the statistics, under the eye of the sociologists and perhaps eventually of a Ministry.

The Child Poverty Action Group is one of the organisations which make it their business to uncover examples of this:

   A woman of 30, suffering from multiple sclerosis, with two boys of 8 and 5, writes: “We are in debt because over the last few years my husband has lost a lot of time off work to see to the children when I have been too ill to manage.”
   This year with my husband off work with his accident, I really dread Christmas. I have to try not to think of it.
  A 36-year-old man confined to a wheel chair due to polio, married with 5 children, was made redundant through the cancellation of TSR 2. Now, on sickness benefit, his financial problems are acute.

The whole point—which is missed by organisations like Child Poverty Action—is that these privations afflict only one section of the population—those who depend on their wage for a living. The other section—the capitalist class—have no money problems if they are ill or have large families and being out of work is not something which worries them because they don’t depend on working for their living. Miss Mervyn Pike, although she is the Tory Shadow Minister of Social Security, showed the Commons last December that she also knows this: “We all recognise that all large families, except those who are very rich, have greater difficulties than smaller families.”

It follows from this (although of course Miss Pike was not interested in where her opinions were leading her) that working class poverty, which sometimes becomes working class destitution, is an unavoidable product of the class division of capitalist society and there can be no cure for it as long as capitalism lasts.

This is the root reason for the failure of the Labour government, which has shocked so many of its supporters. Last April two of these—Professors Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend — signed a letter sent to all members of the Cabinet which appealed to them to “. . .  restore the Government’s sense of social priorities ” and ended “. . .  it is doubtful whether our aim can be achieved unless members of the Cabinet are prepared to consider people with problems, rather than departments with traditional responsibilities.”

There could be no more bitter condemnation than this. The Wilson government has disappointed many of its friends, it has broken its promises. Its policies have been exposed as futile, it has a long list of failures, even by its own standards, to its name; it bids fair to go down as one of the most cynical governments for a very long time. What holds it together? In The Times of 31 July there was an interesting pointed article by David Wood which ended with this passage

   By his wits Harold Wilson put Labour in power, and they know that it is only by his wits that they can stay there. That is the covenant between the Prime Minister and his troubled party, and in party politics there is none more binding.

Is this, after three years of power, what Labour has come to? If Wood is right the party which boasted they were going to build the new Britain has the same sort of “unity” as a gang of hunted criminals. Meanwhile there are still those million children, who do not understand about political infighting, or financial juggling, but who are hungry and suffering.

Ivan.

(Some of the information in this article was supplied by the Child Poverty Action Group. We thank them) .