Finance and Industry: For the record (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the record

Britain's industrial revolution was powered by coal and forged in iron. It was the Darby's of Coalbrookdale, a family of ironmasters, who pioneered the technique of first coking the coal which in turn enabled the use of English ores; in less than half a century, coal and iron between them had transformed the face of England. Since then coal has lost ground to oil, but iron and steel continue to dominate the economy of world capitalism.

It was iron that provided a material strong enough to stand up to steam and so paved the way for Watt’s engines. Industry was able to get away from the rivers and streams and its dependence on waterwheels. Hundreds of miles of canals were built in no time to cope with the increased demands of the blast furnaces for coal. Roads were built to carry away the manufactures.

In the I850's, iron gave way to steel with the developments introduced by Bessemer and Siemens of using “blowers” to raise the furnace temperature and get rid of the impurities in the iron. Since then there have been further improvements, using electric furnaces for special steels and, very recently, the use of oxygen instead of air for the blast. At the same time, as the industry has grown bigger and bigger, more use has been made of the integrated plant principle whereby all the processes of steelmaking are concentrated on the same site- hence the growth of the huge complexes which are the dominant feature today.

These installations need vast capital resources. United States Steel, the biggest producer in the world, has a share capital of over £1,000 million and its nearest rival. Bethlehem Steel, more than £500 million. The world is now scoured for iron-ore; mountains of it are literally taken away and transported thousands of miles to the furnaces. Marvels of engineering construction are built to load and unload it and bulk carriers of up to 100,000 tons ply a ferry service across the oceans. More and more, the furnaces are migrating to the coast to eliminate transport costs—the result is the huge new plants at Newport and Dunkirk, and the proposed giant complex at Rotterdam.

In the Darby’s time, a firm was big if it produced a thousand tons of iron a year; nowadays it is in economic danger if it produces less than a million, or even two million, tons. Steel is still one of the pillars of capitalism’s economy—it is still the barometer that can forecast whether the economy is set fair, or there are storms ahead, or just a period of doldrums.

As usual under capitalism, the tendency is towards bigger and bigger units. There are still absorptions and amalgamations going on, and more and more does an annual output of 2 million tons seem the minimum unit for present day efficiency and competitiveness. In the following table, showing the “top twenty” producers in the world excluding Russia and China, the minimum is actually about 2$ million tons a year.

The most striking impression from the figures is, of course, the overwhelming preponderance of the American firms, particularly U.S. steel, which on its own has a greater output of steel than the whole of the U.K. It is also interesting to note the apparently greater fragmentation of the British industry. United Steel is the only British firm to appear, in the table and there is only one other, the Steel Company of Wales, in the next ten, whereas there are three further German companies, three French, and one Japanese.

We hope to take a further look into the international steel industry in a later issue.

Rivalry v. Safety

We do not need to labour the point about the intense competition existing at present in the aviation industry. What with the excitement over Australia’s decision to buy American TFX's instead of British TSR-2's, the race between the Anglo/French Concord and the U.S. Mach 2 airliner; and the current struggle of B.A.C. to get their V.C.-10 into the air commercially before the Douglas D.C.-9; the aeroplane manufacturers must really be having a worrying time of it.

It was thus a major setback for B.A.C. when their prototype V.C.-I0 crashed recently, apparently as a result of trouble with the tail assembly.

As is well known, the V.C.-10 carries on a technique, engines set well back in the rear, that was developed originally by the French company, Sud-Aviation, with their Caravelle. And it is with Sud- Aviation that B.A.C. are developing the new supersonic Concord.

It has also been known for some time that the V.C.-10 has been running into snags with this particular tail assembly—only a few months ago B.A.C. announced publicly that they had had to modify it. Strong rumour also has it that the Caravelle went through similar troubles in its early development stages. What more natural, then, that B.A.C. should ask Sud-Aviation—after all, their collaborators in the Concord—for details of their earlier experiences of putting engines under the tail?

And what sort of an answer do you think they got? A very dusty one, according to an Insight report in the Sunday Times of October 27 -“Sud-Aviation would disclose nothing.”

A few months later, the V.C.-10 crashed, killing all its crew. There may conceivably be other crashes before the makers discover what is happening to the tail assembly.

In the meantime, the Caravelle flies on, with hardly a competitor. And the longer the V.C.-10 takes to get commercially off the ground the longer will Sud-Aviation enjoy this happy state of affairs. Co-operation may be all very well but under capitalism one must be very careful not to carry it too far.

Stan Hampson

Space in British Aerospace (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is widely held that workers in the aircraft industry are somehow cosseted from the worst effects of booms and slumps in the economic cycle; the fact that, until very recently, the industry in Britain had apparently been little affected by the current recession gave some support to the idea. The truth, however, is that the fortunes of the industry fluctuate just as much as those of any other in the capitalist economy, as those aircraft workers involved in such recent traumas as the TSR2 cancellation will testify.

One of the reasons for this is the sheer size of the product, the design timescale of which has escalated tremendously in the industry’s comparatively short life. Nowadays the time from drawing board to entry into service can be twelve years or more, which means that a vast expenditure over a long period is required before there can be any hope of a profit. The necessary funding has therefore increasingly been provided by government agencies, so making the industry more and more susceptible to the political climate. Charles Gardner, in his history of the British Aircraft Corporation (Batsford, 1981), maintains that in 1970 Wedgwood Benn, Minister of Technology in the Labour Government, would have approved the loan requested by BAC for the 311 airliner, but the Tory government which was elected that year had other ideas. Similarly, a large defence contract signed with Libya in 1968, centring about Thunderbird and Rapier, was terminated after a military coup the following year. The main factors which influence these government decisions are thus not necessarily economic: the industry has suffered severe setbacks in times of general expansion and, conversely, has until recently expanded its workload in some areas in the face of recession.

Further political influences have been introduced as a result of international co-operation in the building of new aircraft. From such has come, among others, the Anglo-French Concorde, the European Airbus Industry and, in the military field, the Anglo-French Jaguar and Anglo-German-Italian Tornado. Amalgamation within the industry has also proceeded with breakneck speed. In Britain at the end of World War II there were 27 different aerospace companies; by 1960 the development of the industry, with some government pushing, had reduced these to only two — British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddley, each with their aircraft and guided weapons divisions. The subsequent amalgamation into British Aerospace, involving so-called “nationalisation" followed by “denationalisation", will be considered later. The development of joint projects with European concerns is a natural continuation of the amalgamation process. If the separate governments concerned could always agree on all matters affecting the projects, perhaps no additional uncertainties would be injected. Under capitalism however such an idyllic situation cannot be expected. Differences between the partners have appeared in connection with all the projects just mentioned. Currently some French interests are pressing for the abandonment of Concorde, whereas earlier it was the French government, who had committed Air France to the plane, which resisted waverers on the British side. All these political factors increase the feeling of insecurity within the industry.

Running parallel with the amalgamation of the companies, and arising from the same economic causes, has been a change in the nature of the work itself. On the production side automation has proceeded much as in engineering in general. Big changes have taken place on the design side also, with the old type of boffin little in evidence. Computer aided design and the large structural analysis programmes now available have taken most of the glamour out of the process. Each worker can now be assigned routine, boring tasks. One effect has been to increase the militancy among designers as the apparent differences between them and workers on the factory floor are eroded. Another is that it is now possible to stress complicated structures more uniformly than before. Under the constant competitive pressure to reduce weight and cost, aircraft are being produced which have smaller safety margins, and this is reflected in an increasing number of fatigue problems.

The current recession is having its effect on the industry despite appearances to the contrary. Although Keynesian economic theories are still quite widely upheld, particularly in France and in the British Labour Party, governments have generally reacted to a slump by trying to reduce their expenditure, as was done in Britain in the 1930s. On defence, the commitment to Trident reduces the amount available for other projects. Another factor is that contractors whose markets in the civil sector have shrunk are delivering defence goods faster and presenting bills for payment more quickly than anticipated. In fact, there has been no overall reduction in defence spending and the 3 per cent increase promised to NATO may well be kept. But even with an increase in defence spending jobs can be lost, as Herman Rebhan, General Secretary of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, made clear when he addressed the United Nations.

There has been a steady increase in military spending in the United States in the past five years. In 1975 there were 97,300 members of the machinists union employed on military contracts. By 1978 there were 85,000, a drop of 12,300. It is because military production operates at the very fringe of technological development. Military industries are both capital intensive and technologically highly advanced. Both aspects mean a decline in labour. Even with a massive new twist in the arms race the military industry is the worst place in which to invest with a view to creating jobs.

(Tridents into Ploughshares by Bill Niven, New Statesman, 12.6.81)

The British Government, having earlier resisted the efforts of West Germany to cut back on Tornado production, is now having second thoughts, possibly reflecting a toughening attitude following the recent Cabinet reshuffle. At the same time British Aerospace has been forced to ask for aid on interest payments to enable it to continue as a partner in the Airbus project. These cashflow problems are threatening to strangle at birth the latest aircraft to appear on the drawing board, the P106/P110 (information on this project can be obtained from an article in The Times, 22.4.81 by the air correspondent Arthur Reed). The Lancashire Evening Post (15.9.81) reports that the Tory Conference would be lobbied in an attempt to save the enterprise.

How is the workforce in British Aerospace reacting to this escalating uncertainty? Some of the younger workers have gone on contract work, mainly in the United States. This offers high rates of pay in the short term, often enabling them to accumulate some savings. However, it does nothing to banish insecurity or lack of job satisfaction; indeed these are rather intensified — contract workers at Boeing have been on as little as one hour’s notice. It is noteworthy that the AV8B contract with McDonnell Douglas was presented on the British media (BBC1 9 o 'clock News, 24.8.81) in terms of the number of jobs it would “secure”. This would not have happened in the United States, where the effect on company profitability may have been stressed but “job security” is not considered possible. Attempts by British Aerospace workers to “do something about it” are confined to fights for a change in government policy. Despite the lip service now being paid to disarmament, this can lead to open advocacy of increased arms expenditure. The slogan “Jobs not bombs" has a hollow ring to these people because to them, bombs and bombers are jobs. The recent cancellation of Skyflash II and delays to the Sea Eagle programme in the 1981 Defence Estimates caused 600 redundancies at the Hatfield and Lostock (near Boston) missile plants. The New Statesman (12.6.81) reports that immediately shop stewards went to lobby Parliament to openly urge the continuation of these projects. The Chairman of Vickers combined shop stewards committee summed this feeling up when he said on television earlier this year: “We don’t sec anything else that could secure full employment. We would welcome five Tridents on our slipways” (New Statesman, 12.6.81). Behind all this activity is the old illusion that capitalism contrary to its nature, can somehow be run in the workers’ interests.

The forced amalgamation of BAC and Hawker Siddley in 1977, to form the “nationalised” British Aerospace, followed this year by "denationalisation” in the form of a public limited company, has introduced another red herring. Not even the most starry-eyed Leftie among the employees can argue that his position as a wage slave has been in any way altered by these changes. Indeed, management in both cases issued statements making clear that terms of employment would remain unchanged. Yet among those active in the trade unions and reformist politics there is still strong support for the nationalisation concept. These workers do not understand that nationalised industries under capitalism are intended to provide a service to the capitalist class as a whole, and are administered in this way by the state, “the executive committee of the ruling class”.

The present discussion on arms conversion and alternative products must not be confused with the position of future socialist society deciding how best to make use of available resources. In the latter case, arms production of all kinds will have ceased and things will be produced solely for use and not for sale with a view to profit. With production geared to satisfying human needs and free access to all goods and services, a decision to cut back on articles no longer required could not menace anybody’s livelihood; a complete contrast to the situation under capitalism. Most of those now discussing “alternatives” believe that disarmament is perfectly feasible under capitalism. While this is manifest nonsense, it does not follow that these ideas can be totally dismissed. We have already seen that increased arms production cannot always prevent contraction in the workforce employed. Also, both the United States and Russia have more than enough arms stockpiled to knock each other out. They could severely limit arms production and still retain this capability, although there is admittedly no sign of such a reduction right now. It is possible however to envisage the capitalists faced with the very difficult problem of unused resources formerly employed on arms production, and needing to convert these to other uses with the minimum of social unrest. The position of the Labour Party, as declared in their latest manifesto, is that

A Labour government will plan to ensure that savings in military expenditure do not lead to unemployment for those working in the defence industries. We shall give material support and encouragement to plans for industrial conversion so that the valuable resources of the defence industries can be used for the production of socially needed goods.

In the United States these ideas have been carried a stage further. A Defence Economic Adjustment Act has actually been introduced into the Senate (Congressional Record, volume 125, No. 50, 26.4.79), the principal sponsors being George McGovern and Charles Mathias. (The first Bill on these lines was put to Congress as early as 1963.) It legislates for the social problems resulting from the arms race. Professor Seymour Mellman, co-chairman of the peace organisation Sane, is quoted: “Economic conversion is the only way of reconciling fear of job loss with opposition to the arms race” (New Statesman, 12.6. 81).

Despite the optimistic phraseology in the wording of the Bill and by some of its supporters, suggesting belief that capitalism can disarm itself, such an Act never be more than a capitalist answer to one of capitalism’s problems. As for “socially needed goods”, even in the deepest recession a little cash could doubtless be found for a pilot scheme to produce a few of these. The problem, as shown by such absurdities as the butter mountain, is how to sell these goods once they are produced. It is this vital point that the Left and other well-meaning reformers seem unable to grasp.

E. C. Edge

Finance and Industry: Enter the trading stamp (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enter the trading stamp

In this present world of ours, goods are produced for sale. To enable things to be sold, a whole complicated network of distribution has grown up, involving wholesalers (first, second, and the rest), retailers, hire purchase companies, credit firms, discount houses, as well as sundry other middlemen and hangers-on. Each of these takes his cut, which naturally he tries to make as large as possible, from the process whereby the articles of life find their weary way from the factory to the consumer.

Now yet another group of middlemen are trying to muscle in the trading stamp companies. They are not, of course, entirety new to this country, but so far they have not played much of a role. In the United States, on the other hand, they have become big business and some of the American firms are now invading Britain.

Arguments are already heated about whether the consumer really gains anything from trading stamps. Some observers say that he does and that it is the retailer who does not give stamps who suffers by losing his trade to his competitor who does give them. Others say that American experience shows that the consumer may benefit slightly at the beginning but that later he will be no better off because more and more retailers will go over to the stamps and add their cost to their selling prices. They allege that this has already happened in the U.S., where the net result of the trading stamp boom has been to put up retail prices to the point where what the consumer gets back in stumps he pays for in higher prices.

But all this is really beside the point. Whether the consumer gets a small advantage at the expense of the retailer, or the latter makes it up by higher prices, it only serves to conceal that all that has happened is that yet another set of middlemen has managed to get into the act, getting a nice fat rake-off for doing something which is utterly useless from the point of view of actual production.

It really amazes us sometimes the way people will dismiss Socialism as utopian, but accept all the idiocies of capitalism as normal and reasonable. Not one ounce of extra wealth is produced from the activities of the trading stamp companies; the only result is to sharpen the struggle over the profit derived from what has actually been produced.

Competition goes supersonic

Things look like moving faster than ever in the air world. And we don’t mean only aeroplanes. The prospect of lots of extra supersonic bangs before long is going to disturb more than the sleep of those unfortunate to live too close to airports. Lots of airline operators, as well as politicians, are already reaching for the tranquillisers. Everything seems ready for yet a further round of waste, muddle, and stupidity in the international air industry.

Pan-American's decision to order six Anglo-French Concords took only 24 hours to squeeze an announcement from President Kennedy that the United States were going to build an even faster plane. The staggering sum of $750 million has been mentioned as a likely cost.

The Concord venture is being supported by the British and French Governments to the tune of £75 million from each. The final cost may well be more. All the purpose of all this vast expenditure of wealth? To enable a microscopic few of the world’s inhabitants to cross the Atlantic in three hours or get to Australia in half a day.

All this against a background of waste and absurdity in which the great majority of the airline companies are already losing money and where the pace of competition is so hot that large numbers of perfectly good aircraft are discarded with years of useful life in them. So fierce is the drive for speed that many of the world's airports are no longer really capable of coping with the planes. Now all the sorry story over jets seems likely to be repeated with supersonic aircraft.

Not all the experts are happy about the new development. Lord Brabazon is one. Instead of “promoting air transport for the peoples of the world,” he has said, “the airlines have simply helped the rich to travel vast distances at very higher speed and cost.” And, he added, “A big machine carrying 200 people in comparative comfort at up to 250 m.p.h., but landing at no more than 60 knots should be safe, welcome, and pay.”

But Lord Brabazon, more than most, should know that his appeal will go unheeded. Air transport and aircraft construction are no longer the concern of private capitalists, but have become wards of the state. In general, they now make no more sense, even from the capitalist economic viewpoint, than the vast industries that have grown up to throw rockets into space. They have become part and parcel of the struggle between national groups, in which the various governments are prepared to go into all sorts of projects, spend vast amounts of money, engage in ridiculous competition with each other. They are a supreme example of the tendency of the units of capitalism to get bigger; in the air it is no longer the private capitalists that fight each other, it is their national states. Behind every aircraft company there are state subsidies, government orders, and national military needs.

No, the Concord was not well-named. Discord would have been more appropriate.

Facts about fish

A recent report from F.A.O. reveals that 1961 saw the world's highest production of fish—just over 41 million tons. This shows an increase of 10 million tons, or 30 per cent., over the total catch in 1957, but the picture is really not as optimistic as it looks.

Most of the increase is the result of a phenomenal rise in Peruvian production —of small anchovies processed into animal feed. Apart from this and "a modest rise in the Chinese catch, world production has remained virtually static. Indeed, the alarms are already sounding of a likely decrease in production as the well-known fishing grounds become depleted. The boats get bigger, their engines more powerful, and their range ever-wider, but the catch tends to get smaller. Competition has led to overfishing.

But, as usual, the paradox of production under capitalism discloses that there are still many more fish in the sea than ever come out of it; of the sea’s possible production, 90 per cent. is still left untouched. And even under present conditions. F.A.O. reckons that the total world catch could be doubled without too much danger to stocks. Today, 80 per cent. of total production is caught north of the Equator; the southern seas are almost unfished.

Capitalism will itself see to it that the oceans of the world give up more of their riches. But progress will as usual be slow and wasteful. The trawlers of dozens of countries will continue to compete fiercely with each other; will set out to fish over the same grounds; will spend useless weeks at sea, some of them, before reaching fishing areas which the trawlers of other countries can reach in a quarter of the time. There will still be disputes over international rights; over 3 mile, 6 mile, 12 mile limits; prices will still be subject to catastrophic fluctuations. Over all will remain the constant threat of overfishing.

Even in this situation, F.A.O. tries to introduce a little order and co-operation, but competing self-interests foredoom its efforts to failure. What is required is the harmonious, organised and co-operative development of research and productive techniques to provide a steady, reliable, and efficient production of food from the sea.

But we shall not get that under capitalism.

Stan Hampson

News in Review: CND's "new" plan (1963)

The News in Review column from the January 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

CND’s '‘new” plan

Once upon a time there was an organisation, which stood for nuclear disarmament. A lot of people joined it and not all of them were beatniks or angrys out for a punch up with the cops. They did a lot of work and made a lot of fuss with their demonstrations in Trafalgar Square.

Some of this organisation’s members said that they were Socialists, but they thought that Socialism should wait because the first priority was to have capitalism get rid of its nuclear weapons.

When the Russians let off a whopping great bomb they went to the Soviet Embassy and said that they would not leave until they had an assurance that no more bombs would be tested. When it was time for the Embassy to close the police came and carried them out into the street.

They went on thinking that they could get capitalism to scrap its nuclear bombs.

Then the Cuba crisis came and everybody, including the organisation, got the wind up. A lot of people began to doubt the theory that the two disputing blocs of capitalism could keep the peace in a state of mutual terror, and they said so. They were a bit slow in this—Socialism had been pointing it out ever since the deterrent theory was born, which was a long time before the nuclear bomb came along.

So the CND dropped their own bomb. There is, they have decided, a new order of priorities. The first one is to get the support of as many of the deterrent-theory doubters as they can. They have guessed that this is unlikely to happen unless they modify their old policy.

The first urgency now, according to CND, is to limit nuclear weapons to Russia and America. Perhaps they have not noticed that these are the very two countries which are the most likely to use such weapons, because they are the countries who are currently disputing on a world-wide scale.

But the important point is that CND has gone the way of so many other organisations whose members said that they wanted Socialism, but thought that the revolution should wait until they had got some sort of reformed capitalism first.

All of them started out with a bold, dramatic policy which stirred up some support. Then the need to attract more members persuaded them to modify their policy and to keep it more in line with the requirements of capitalism.

Perhaps one day CND will end up like some of the others—a staid, responsible pillar of capitalist society, nuclear weapons and all.

This need be no fairy story. And there is no happy ending.

Supersonic Airliner

Among clouds of misgiving, with hardly a cheer raised for it, the project for an Anglo-French supersonic airliner —to be called the Concorde—has got off the ground.

The economics of the thing are dicy. The £150 million aircraft is the biggest—in size and money—aviation venture ever to have been launched in Europe.

The British and French governments hope that the Concorde, flying at around 1,500 miles an hour, will capture the market for big, fast, long range airliners which will be open when the last of the present type of jets are played out, in about seven years’ time.

But right now the American aircraft industry is examining the prospects for a Mach 3 airliner. If this project comes to reality the Anglo-French giant will probably be out of date a few years after its first flight and a lot of expensive aircraft will be up for sale at knock down prices.

This was the fate of the Britannias and the Comets, both of which have been beaten out of the market by the big American jets. BOAC, once bitten, is distinctly shy of the supersonic project. They will not buy it, they say, unless they are assured that ". . . the Anglo-French supersonic aircraft will be economically operable and competitive for a period equal to that currently used in accounting practice.”

But if there are uncertainties that the Concorde will make money, nobody doubts its ability to make a lot of noise. People who have been driven to distraction by the scream of the jets now have to look forward to supersonic booms rippling regularly over the country. (The more powerful American aeroplanes will probably be worse for noise than the Concorde.)

The government, of course, knows of this, but have shrugged the problem off. The damage from the booms, says Minister of Aviation Julian Amery, will be "negligible”—a sweet word, the meaning of which is gradually changing as politicians use it consistently to assure us that something which they know is harmful is actually almost good for us.

The British airlines, and the British aircraft industry, cannot afford to be left out of the scramble for speed and more speed, which for some of them is the only hope of making any profit. So they are committed to something which even by capitalism’s standards is unlikely to be a success.

By human standards the thing is a complete write-off. It makes us wonder what inhuman, stupid, pointless venture capitalism will think up next.

Unemployment

While Mr. Maudling talked, the unemployed figure went up and the number of vacant jobs went down, so that on a graph a great gap yawned between the two lines.

There were all manner of indications that this increase in unemployment is more serious than any other recent bout of it.

The total for November was the worst for that month since 1940. The number of wholly unemployed increased from mid-October to mid-November at over twice the normal seasonal rate. The Northern region had the highest percentage of unemployed since the Ministry of Labour began keeping regional figures, in 1949.

And all this was happening after the reductions in Bank Rate, after the easing of credit restrictions, after the cuts in purchase tax and the other government measures which, the City Editors so often tell us, cannot fail to stimulate the economy.

Yet the economy remains stubbornly unstimulated. Gloomed The Guardian on November 23rd last: ". . . business is no more confident now of good times ahead than it has been all summer . . . the New Year unemployment could reach a new post-war high. . .”

Now anyone with a moderately long memory will recall that the great, post-war security schemes were supposed to have taken the sting out of unemployment.

The fact is, though, that in one way the out of work are worse off now than they were before the war. A single man can now get £2 17s. 6d. from the dole which is about nineteen per cent. of his average earnings when he is in work. In 1924 the dole was 32 per cent, of average earnings: since then this percentage has steadily decreased.

The present day percentage of nineteen compares to 90 per cent. in Germany. 70 per cent. in Holland and 60 per cent. in Switzerland.

There is a simple way of summing this up. The promises which were made for capitalism during the last war—that life would be freer and more secure when the shooting had stopped—have been exposed.

It is still possible, even likely, that masses of workers in this country can be unemployed. Slumps are still around every corner. All the promises which are made for capitalism are empty lies.

So They Say: Sea Fever (1976)

The So They Say Column from the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sea Fever

The "BUY BRITISH” campaign launched recently by Mr. Peter Shore, the Trade Secretary, is making little progress in a number of fields. While Mr. Shore has little to offer but a redundant call for patriotism, the international realities of capitalist society have left him behind. The General Council of British Shipping has become concerned recently at the growth of the Russian merchant shipping industry. The Russian fleet is expanding at a relatively fast rate and coupled with heavy government subsidies, they offer reduced rates of carriage.

In a pamphlet published on the 16th January the Council concludes that the Russians are deliberately under-cutting other shipping industries in order to increase their share of the market.

  Unless checked, West European trade could come to depend increasingly on Eastern bloc transport within the next five years.

The Council therefore, representing the interests of British shipowners, have called for "Western governments” to introduce legislation which would restrict the use of Russian vessels should the owners fail to “negotiate” an agreement on how the cake is to be divided. They feel of course that the homegrown capitalist shipowner is to be preferred.

However, the British Shipper’s Council, which represents approximately 250 of the largest importers and exporters, has put the issue into perspective Their members have interests too: one of which is to take any economic advantage from a clash of interests among ship-owners.

   The council (British Shipper’s Council) acknowledges the dangers posed by the growth of the Russian merchant fleet but argues that its members cannot put national sentiment above the interest of their companies.

Daily Telegraph, 16th January 1976.

Coincidentally on the other side of the page, we have a report of Mr. Shore’s address to the British-Soviet Chamber of Commerce on 15th January. And what was he telling this hawk-eyed assembly—why, that it was “absolutely essential that Russia should place some substantial new orders with British industry quickly.” No doubt if the orders are forthcoming, Mr. Shore will advise the Russians that they must be carried in British ships.

To Heel, Fido

There has been considerable opposition in the US to the granting of landing rights for Concorde from what is termed “the environmental lobby.” Various arguments are put forward concerning noise levels, pollution and possible damage to the stratosphere ozone layer. Although these factors cannot be discounted, the real pressure is coming from the American aero-industry which sees the plane as a threat to their commercial interests. However the considerable capital tied up in the project, and the repercussions which would result from the supersonic “white elephant” being scrapped, has ensured that the government will take any and every step to over-ride the objections. The public hearing in Washington held to discuss the pros and cons of Concorde was informed rather neatly by Mr. Kaufman, the British Minister of State for Industry, that Concorde would not break international noise standards for supersonic aircraft—because no such standards exist.

It was not surprising then to find that when the President of the Heathrow Association for Control of Aircraft Noise, the Bishop of Kingston, put the view to the hearing that noise from Concorde “will cause great distress to people’s lives,” he drew some hostile comments from the official British representatives. Mr. Kaufman referred to the Bishop’s contribution as “froth and emotion;” “a kind of Monty Python sermon;” and “a kind of music hall act.” Although we are in little doubt of the Bishop’s abilities in this direction, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, felt that they could have been better employed elsewhere. Showing the extent of the usefulness of the church to the capitalist class, he asked:

  Surely, too, in his diocese there is work to be done which could fully engage his bounding energy? Is there not religious apathy to be fought, lax morality to be countered? Are there not humble homes to be visited and prayed in? Are there no hard-pressed clergy who look for help to their father-in-God? Would it not have been more useful, not to say more appropriate if he had devoted his time to spiritual matters rather than the temporal sort of sky-piloting for which I grant licences?

Daily Telegraph, 10th January 1976.

Bark, Fido

More light was thrown on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the British government during the early war years when Foreign Office papers from 1940/1 were recently examined by the Jesuit periodical, Civilta Cattolica. According to the Jesuits, the Vatican radio was under pressure from the government to broadcast anti-Nazi propaganda which was often re-transmitted by the BBC in “distorted and provocative” form. The supposed neutrality of the Vatican, coupled with the fact that the radio was directed towards 40 million Catholics, meant that it was a propaganda outlet of importance. The British and German foreign offices were engaged in a "continuing struggle” to influence the broadcasts, until, after 16 months, Pope Pius XII decided to avoid further controversy, and stopped them in April 1941.

The British Foreign Office was initially angered by the decision—Sir Robert Vansittart (then chief diplomatic adviser to the government) describing the Pope as “One of the feeblest ever.” Later, Sir Alec Randall—who had been Secretary at the British Legation to the Holy See—reflected:

   The Vatican wireless has been of the greatest service to our propaganda and we have exploited it to the full. No other neutral power would, in the face of this, have persisted so long in furnishing us with useful material and risking violent criticism from powers with which it is in ordinary diplomatic relations.

Times, 15th January 1976.

Production for Profit

Production in capitalist society takes place when the owners of the means of production expect to realize a profit from the sale of their commodities. When that expectation decreases because the market becomes “overburdened” or because demand has fallen, production is tailored accordingly. The important point is that “the market” is made up of buyers and sellers. From the market’s point of view, once a worker has spent his wages he no longer has any requirements. However real his needs may be they are not an element of “demand” in the production of those commodities which he cannot afford to buy. In short, commodities are produced for exchange, not for use.

Questioners at our meetings are sometimes surprised to learn that food is a commodity and exhibits the same characteristics as other commodities. “Isn’t food for eating?” we are asked, “No, food is for sale” is the reply. Mr. Adrien Ries, chief counsellor in the agricultural sector of the European Commission, speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference in January, highlighted the effect of production for a market:

  The demand for food is limited and not capable of huge expansion. This means that the income to farmers as a group is not capable of rapid expansion through continued increases in output. (Our emphasis)

Times, 12th January 1976.

While it has become an accepted fact that well over one half of the world’s population suffer from a lack of decent sustenance, and millions die annually as a result, here we are told that demand for food is limited. Mr. Roger Bennett, also speaking at the conference asked:

  How does one measure productivity? It can only be done by increasing profits. We have had a very good example of this in the past year with the potato producer. Nature has come along and depressed his total production to the point at which there is a shortage and has raised profits. There is a salutary lesson in all this for all of us.

There is a lesson to be learned, but not from these twisted teachers "Ah yes they might say "but within the context of capitalism, our remarks are realistic." Ah yes, but that is the point, look at the ugly realities of capitalism and then ask why such a system should continue.

Alan D'Arcy

The Review Column: Sonic Booms (1967)

The Review Column from the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sonic Booms

Let no one deceive themselves that the sonic booms over various parts of the country last July were inflicted as part of a test of people's reactions.

Firstly, it soon became clear that Wedgewood Benn's Ministry of Technology had not bothered to set up any machinery to gauge reactions to the booms, secondly the booms were nothing like what can be expected if supersonic airliners are allowed to fly overland.

If the development of other types of aircraft is any guide, the operators of the supersonic planes will want to fly them all day and all night, everyday and every night. The prospect which this conjures up is nothing like the single isolated crack of a small jet fighter in the middle of a summer afternoon, described by Wedgewood Benn as ". . . at an intensity well below that of supersonic airliners”.

Of course the booms provoked a lot of protest, but Wedgewood Benn, under fire in the Commons, had the answer to them all: 'Substantial sums are being put by this country into advanced aircraft, the financial success of which will in part depend on whether the aircraft fly from other people’s territory.'

The Concord, then, is no more than a typical product of capitalism. A lot of money invested in it; side effects unpleasant, probably dangerous; competition the driving force behind its production; no profit incentive to solve the problem of its effects.

In this situation, the comfort and safety of people on the ground are only a secondary consideration. There is reason to believe that the booms last July were not tests of our reactions, but the first step in getting us accustomed to the idea of them, in preparation for the days when they are banging off in earnest.

And this, let us remember, is what capitalism calls progress.


Aberfan

The Aberfan Tribunal promised that there would be no whitewashing. They produced a report full of memorable phrases (“bungling ineptitude"; "subterfuge and arrogance by the National Coal Board"; “eight years of folly and neglect”) and they laid the blame for the disaster, on the National Coal Board, its headquarters, its divisional board, and four of its officials.

In this, the tribunal followed the accepted pattern of all enquiries into disasters. Somewhere, somebody—a railway signalman, an airline pilot, a ship's captain—makes a mistake or breaks a rule. It is all too easy, afterwards, to point the finger.

Very few people care to wonder about the context in which the ‘mistakes' are made, the rules ‘broken’.

Only in passing, for example, did the Aberfan tribunal deal with the basic cause of the disaster, which was the very existence of the slag heaps, up on the mountain above the doomed village.

Tipping waste from coal mines is, after all, the simplest and cheapest way of disposing of it. In South Wales, the valleys cannot be used for the tips because that is where the pit heads and the houses must be built. So that the stuff is dumped onto the mountains, where it is a continual eyesore and menace.

Of course they could stop tipping but, as the tribunal said on this very point ". . . the reflection that to stop tipping could bring about the closure of the Merthyr Vale Colliery may well have led to the quick suppression of those doubts . . ."

Of course they could deposit the stuff underground but this, said the tribunal, was neither “technically feasible now nor economically practicable" (The Times estimated the cost of removing tip complex alone at £3 million).

Thus the tribunal accepted the economic confine within which capitalism’s industry operates. It accepted that anything which is not economically practicable must be rejected, it accepted that people must live in the constant need to work for their living. It accepted that, although a certain amount must be done to mitigate the hardships of this social set-up, in the end we must make the best of it.

The economic practicabilities of capitalism have a lot to answer for, in coal mining more than in most other industries. Aberfan was only the latest, if one of the most unusual, of the disasters caused by the ‘economic’ production of coal.

Lord Robens (as the Daily Telegraph of 7th August was unkind enough to recall) once said that the Labour Government in 1950 “washed the blood off the coal” which was normally on it when the Tories were in power.

After Aberfan it may be convenient to blame individual workers, employees of the National Coal Board. The true culprit is capitalist society—and there is still, after all, blood on the coal.

Sandys’ Racialism

One of the first to exploit the irrational fears the Detroit riots created was Tory former Minister Duncan Sandys. In a statement he called for a stop to all entry into Britain of what he called coloured people and added, for good measure, “including relatives of those who are here’’. We don’t know if Sandys has prepared a series of amendments to the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts which will provide immigration officials with a precise standard for judging who are to be considered coloured and who not. We doubt it. For Sandys seems just to be concerned with encouraging hostility between people with lighter and people with darker skin pigmentation.

Perhaps the most revolting part of Sandys statement read:

  The breeding of millions of half-caste children would merely produce a generation of misfits and create increased tensions.

The words breeding, half-caste and misfits seem to have been carefully chosen—with a view to stirring up hostility to so-called mixed marriages and their offspring. What precisely does Sandys mean by misfit? He may be subscribing to the old racialist myth that what they call race-mixing leads to physical and moral degeneration. Or he may just mean that such children will be subject to prejudice. Or perhaps he deliberately meant to be ambiguous; to suggest one thing while having a let-out if challenged. If he means that these children would be the victims of prejudice, we can only assume from the fact that his words encourage such prejudice that he thinks it a good thing; that he favours a virtual caste system under which the so-called whites are on top and the so-called blacks at the bottom. We can only suggest that as a former director of Ashanti Goldfields and other goldmining companies in Ghana he should be careful about biting the hands that have fed him for years. He should also be careful about talking of sending people back. Somebody might take his fancy French name as a reason to send him to Normandy.

The Review Column: War Against the Unions (1969)

The Review Column from the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

War Against the Unions

The war between the Labour government and the unions is now being fought on three fronts.

This autumn the Prices and Incomes Act comes up for review in Parliament and there will be a battle over whether it should be left as it is, or altered, or scrapped altogether. Going on past experience, there will be the usual dismal clutch of Labour MPs threatening to do something desperate like abstain from the Commons vote, and the unions supplicating for modifications and concessions.

Both groups will probably come to terms with what they call their conscience and the government will get the legislation it wants.

Then there is the battle over future legislation, sketched out in the White Paper In Place of Strife. This will try to restrict the unions and to regulate the class struggle into a nice, cosy, disciplined affair.

Whatever the government manages to push through on this, if the experience of other countries with similar laws is anything to go by, it will have little effect in the long run.

Finally there is the battle — in places like Ford’s, the docks, the schools—over wage rises and improvements in working conditions which go against government policy.

Of course the Labour government expected to have to fight the workers on these fronts. On the other hand the unions, and those workers who go on strike outside unions' agreements, should also have been able to forecast what has happened.

The Labour Party were quite clear, for years before they came to power, about their intention of trying to tame the workers. This is normal, in a party whose policy is to try to run capitalism.

The workers should have realised this, when they were voting Labour in their millions. And they should remember it, when they next have a chance to choose which party shall run British capitalism. Then they should ask themselves what is the real alternative to strife.

 

Concorde

The Concorde, taking off amid its own thunder into clouds of doubt and confusion is, we are told; a triumph of modem technology.

We should, apparently, all be grateful to the designers and scientists who have made it possible for a handful of business men and wealthy travellers to get across the Atlantic a few hours faster than before — even if this is at the cost of a multitude of damages to our homes and our nerves.

But of course Concorde was not built to benefit human beings — if it were it would be unique in capitalism. The development of military aircraft during the war opened up supersonic travel and this was sure to be applied to civilian airliners.

The British and French aircraft industries have rushed into this venture, unsure of its ultimate effects, its feasibility, even its economics, in the hope of recapturing some of the advantages lost to the Americans in the market for the big jets.

As it happened the Russians beat everyone to the draw and their supersonic airliner was the first to fly. It may yet make an effective bid for the world market in these monstrous aircraft

It may turn out that it was all a colossal waste of time. The sonic boom may do so much damage to property on the ground, and to the working efficiency of people, that its economic disadvantages outweigh the aircraft’s profitability.

If this happens, some people may think supersonic planes were defeated by a concern for human well-being. But as usual this has hardly come into the matter.

The truth is that the whole business— the Concorde programme, the withdrawal of the Americans, the bid from Russia, the possible collapse of Concorde — has been motivated by capitalism’s quest for profit. With that as a priority, humane factors come a long way behind.

Russia versus China

The powers of capitalism can never be frank about the reasons for their international conflicts. That is why the official propaganda machines always represent wars as clashes of ideology — clashes between cruelty and mercy, belligerence and amity, or simply between right and wrong.

This applies as much to those states which claim to be socialist as to the rest. The dispute between Russia and China, for example, is represented by both sides as an ideological clash; the Russians say the Chinese are warmongers, the Chinese accuse Russia of betraying a socialist revolution.

During the fighting last month at Damansky Island, in the Ussuri River, both Russia and China accused the other of “armed provocation”. The Russian protest complained of “adventuristic policy . . . reckless provocative actions . . .” The Chinese loudspeakers blared out abuse about the “renegade, revisionist clique” in Moscow.

In fact the fighting started for anything but ideological reasons. The Russian territory around Vladivostok was annexed under the Tsars in the 19th century. The Bolsheviks swore to return the land but that was one of those vows which were quietly forgotten in the rise of capitalism in Russia.

Since then Russia has poured an immense amount of capital into developing the area’s industries and communications. Vladivostok is an important naval base, and Russia’s only commercial outlet to the Pacific. And just like any other capitalist class, the rulers of Russia are anxious to protect their investments.

China, however, as a newly rising capitalist power is pressing to re-negotiate the treaties which lay down her frontiers (the reason, also, for the clashes with India in 1962), one of which is marked by the Ussuri. All of this combined to make a delicate and dangerous situation, which is not in any way lessened by the supposed ideological comradeship between the two states.

It is, in fact, a classical dispute between two capitalist powers. Very often these disputes start over something trivial, like a spit of sand in the Ussuri River. But the background is anything but trivial.