The Passing Show: Who are the hungry? (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the hungry?

When I was a youngster, my parents had the sort of struggle to clothe and feed their children that was common enough in those days. With the Old Man often out of work, Ma had to turn her hand to any job available—charring mainly—for a few shillings. Like many other working class children, we were badly clothed and housed, and while perhaps we did not actually starve, we were often hungry.

At that time, it would have been ludicrous to suggest that we give to funds aimed at preventing starvation or alleviating poverty in other parts of the world. Ma would have laughed that one bitterly out of court. We were already recipients of charity in one form or another—coal, food parcels and other children’s leftoffs—and it was cold comfort to be told that there were always those worse off than ourselves.

Times have now changed, we are assured. Ma is dead and Pa draws National Assistance to keep him ticking over in his declining days. The overt charity has more or less dried up, although he does get occasional gifts and treats from the old age pensioners’ club. He doesn’t go hungry, although from what I can see of it, a lot of what he eats is starchy filler with not much food value. Ironically, two or three years ago he was frequently an interested reader of The Good Food Guide, a yearly catalogue of recommended eating houses in the British Isles.

Ironic from another angle too. This book is published by The Good Food Club, which recently allowed OXFAM access to its address lists for circularising an invitation to an “austerity supper.” The meal would consist of a bowl of herbs and rice, with cold water. The charge, said the letter, would be two guineas, the balance after meeting costs to go to OXFAM funds. Pa got one of the circulars.

Now no one is suggesting that there was any calculated insult intended. Of course OXFAM could not know that they were writing to an old age pensioner, and anyway, he did not take it amiss—merely laughed. It is the whole basic concept of such bodies as OXFAM that must be challenged. In a world where there are over forty million refugees and around half the population underfed, an organisation like this can barely begin to scratch the surface of the problem, granting their sincerity every inch of the way.

I have before me one or two of OXFAM’s appeal adverts. One tells us that:

“Millions of the world’s families have no great hope for 1965. To them it will be just another year in the endless battle against hunger, disease and the terrible, grinding poverty.”

And another says that OXFAM will be:

“Helping them get enough to eat, buying them medicines, giving them a roof over their heads. But most important, helping them free themselves from a life sentence of poverty—with education, training, new tools.”

So from this you could be forgiven for thinking that these problems are associated perhaps with the “backward” areas. Politicians do anyway lend credence to it by talking about “aid to underdeveloped countries” (e.g. Mr. Wilson at the beginning of January). But it is not so. The foremost capitalist country in the world—USA—has such an appalling poverty problem that writers are often drawing attention to it.

“According to government figures … 56 per cent of low-income farm families were deficient in one or more basic nutrients in the diet. The rural poor were ever worse off. Seventy per cent suffered from this deficiency. Thus there is hunger in the midst of abundance.” (Michael Harrington, The Other America.)

Yet OXFAM would think it ridiculous to spend their funds in the USA. They concentrate exclusively on the extreme poverty and hunger which are rooted in primitive agriculture and inadequate physical means of production, poor land etc. These may of course aggravate a local condition under capitalism, but there is no doubt that the world at large is capable of feeding everyone—if properly organised.

Aye, there’s the rub. Wheat stored away in river backwaters, lettuces and potatoes ploughed back into the soil, and land deliberately taken out of cultivation, all to try and keep up the prices to a profitable level. The fact that people starve in the meantime is a mere incidental. The market is the all powerful god under capitalism. And this not only in Western countries. Only last month we drew attention to the deliberate burning of cocoa in Ghana for precisely the same reason as above. If OXFAM are thinking of spending some of their money in this backward area, we wonder what they think about such news as that.

The tragedy of OXFAM, Freedom from Hunger, War on Want, and other such organisations is not just their failure to make any worthwhile effect on the problem. It is their refusal even to glimpse its causes or to question a world which can destroy food stocks wholesale in one place and let millions starve in another.

Conservative Security

I noticed a giant poster, presumably a leftover from the general election, on a hoarding at the top of our road a week or two ago. “For a safer world, vote Conservative” it screamed at me from the usual bilious red white and blue colour scheme. It was the use of the comparative “safer” I found intriguing. Did it mean safer than right now. Or perhaps safer when the Conservatives were last in power, or just safer in a general sense?

Whichever way you look at it, the underlying theme is that political parties in general and the Conservative Party in particular, can appreciably affect the safety of the world by their policies. The Tories would not of course suggest that their opponents were deliberately pushing the world to the verge of another war. Rather would they be inclined to say that it was their ineptitude which was doing the damage, and that only the return of the Conservatives can restore matters.

Well let’s have a brief look at it. In the past fifty years there have been two world wars, both supported by the Tories. They were in power for quite a large part of that period. Not a particularly peaceful one. In the years of the postwar Labour government, it was remarkable how Tory support could be guaranteed for actions involving armed force or the threat of it, such as Greece, Berlin and Korea.

What of the years which followed? When they returned to power in 1951, the Conservatives had already made the usual vague promises about “our contribution to peace,” but whatever this may have meant to them in theory, what happened in practice was the almost chronic bloodshed in Cyprus, and the crises in Suez, Lebanon and Berlin (again). A safer world?

I would not have called it that, but there’s an amazing flexibility of meaning to such words when spoken by capitalist statesmen. Anyway, they were not discouraged and were busy telling us again later that “Peace is one more reason why Conservative government is good government.” (Guardian advert 17.8.59.). In the five years which followed that little piece of double talk, we have had more bloodletting in Cyprus and the agonising Cuba affair, not to mention smaller incidents in various parts of the world.

The truth is that the Conservative Party is no more a party of peace than of war. Like its Labour counterpart it is committed to running British capitalism and protecting its interests at home and abroad. At times this will mean sending men out to fight and die. That is why, even allowing for differences of opinion and errors of judgment, the views of government and opposition are so close, especially in the field of foreign policy. That is why also, there will always be those on either side who will jeer that the others are stealing their thunder, or protest that their party is becoming contaminated with the other side’s ideas. This was the very gist of one speaker’s complaint at the Young Conservatives’ Conference on February 7th.

But the net result is still the same. It is still a very unsafe world in which to live because the conflicting interests of capitalism make it so. Far from influencing the course of events to any great extent, the Conservative and other capitalist parties must frame their policies to meet the events and then hope for the best.

Propaganda Broadside

Have you noticed a crop of newspaper adverts about South Africa recently? Those I have seen glowingly describe the place as “a developing community of nations” or “rich in resources and rewards” or “the British Motor Industry’s biggest single export market.” The South African government is obviously anxious to build up a favourable picture particularly, it seems, in Britain, and if in the process the truth gets a bit discoloured that’s not likely to worry them overmuch.

Take for example their claim of January 26th:

“The structure of non-white wages has been, and is constantly being, raised to realistic levels of economic and social requirements . . . thousands of African workers . . . seek an opportunity to work and earn better wages on South African farms and in the mines and factories.”

Somewhat vague, but definitely calculated to create a good impression would you think? Now compare it with a United Nations report only two weeks earlier:

“Africans working for foreign companies in S.W. Africa live as though in slavery. . . . The policy of Apartheid . . . offers . . . every opportunity for the exploitation of the indigenous inhabitants. . . . The very low level of African wages, the lack of development of the native reserves, and the evils of the migratory labour system, result in misery and untold sufferings.”

Maybe it’s as well that Socialists have a sort of built-in scepticism which makes them examine everything they are told with a supercritical eye. But as you can see, we don’t always have to make conscious efforts at disproving the falsehoods spread around by one ruling class or the other. South African racial policies have provoked hostility among the new “coloured” states, and some of the older capitalist states are coming out against them too. So it’s not surprising that reports like this one appear from time to time, and South Africa comes under fire from the other paragons of virtue at the U.N.

What we should bear in mind is that there has been evidence of harsh and oppressive conditions there for many years, but it is only recently that outside interests have demanded any fuss be made about it. Quite clearly brotherly love is only a minor consideration in this new-found desire for racial equality. “Exploitation for all workers, regardless of race” is the real battle cry behind the pious slop uttered by the winds-of-change-merchants.

Eddie Critchfield

Churchill in perspective (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sufficient time has passed since Churchill’s funeral for popular emotions to wane—but not sufficient yet to make it likely that his words and deeds will be subjected to any analysis for popular consumption. No doubt historians in the future will discover reasons to doubt his greatness, but there is no need to await the passage of time.

In what way can he be considered great? His actions concerning the working class, his military prowess, his flair for foreign affairs?

It was he who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C.

He recognised the inability of economists to understand capitalism, and he admitted inadequacies in the system, particularly “the strange discordance between the producing and consuming power.” (Daily Telegraph, 20.6.30.)

The News Chronicle (10.11.43.) reported him as saying,

“I regard it as a definite part of the duty and responsibility of this National Government to have it set about a vast and practical scheme to make sure that in the years immediately following the war there will be food, work and homes for all.”

But by 1948, the war over and there not being the same need to urge workers to greater efforts, he was arguing against “precise elaborate programmes.” In 1952, back in office, he was stressing the need for three years to elapse before any improvement would show. He left the government in 1955 and today the old problems of “food, work and homes” are still with us.

Churchill the military man certainly had some grand concepts. Commenting on the expeditions to Antwerp and Gallipoli, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says:

“In both cases the strategic concept was brilliant, but the forces required for their success were not forthcoming, and Churchill’s own impatience contributed to their failure.”

It reports Churchill as describing the Dardanelles campaign as “a legitimate war gamble.” (The Encyclopaedia Americana records the British losses as over 33,000 killed, 78,000 wounded and 7,000 missing. Turkish and French casualties were also very high.) What sort of man can make a legitimate gamble of the lives of hundreds of thousands of men?

In the second volume of the Official British History of the Second World War by Major L. F. Ellis, it appears that in 1940, when Churchill was being built up as the great war leader, his telegrams and messages to Lord Gort, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force were, “not always relevant” and he “did not grasp the nature of the German threat to the B.E.F. as a whole, nor the weakness of the Belgian position.”

What is the basis for Churchill’s claim to greatness in the field of foreign affairs? It is said that he was one of the few who in the Thirties understood the ambitions of Nazi Germany. But his own words show that he was not opposed to dictatorship in principle.

After the 1914-18 War, he stated his policy as “Peace to the German people, war on the Bolshevik tyranny.” In 1927 he was “charmed, . . . , by Signer Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of many burdens and dangers.”

The Evening Standard (2.4.37.) reports Churchill as saying,

“It is certain that if Franco wins. he will be in no position to interfere with British and French interests in the Mediterranean. The Germans and Italians will have little or no influence upon Spanish policy once the firing stops.”

But by April 5th the same paper reports him as saying, “A thoroughly Nazified Spain, retaining its German nucleus, may well be a cause of profound anxiety to both France and Britain.”

Events were causing him to change his words, and not only towards Spain :

“We should not go cap in hand to Soviet Russia, but how improvidently foolish we should be. … to put needless barriers in the way of the general association of the great Russian mass with the resistance to an act of Nazi aggression (News Chronicle, 10.5.38.)

Compare this with his statement, reported in the Daily Telegraph, (7.11.38.); “I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war, I hope we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations.”

It cannot be more clear, Churchill was not oppose to the Fascist powers as long as they did not threaten British capitalist interests. He thought “great men” could secure Britain’s position in the world, but after the war he had to accept that Britain, compared with the USA and Russia, was a second-rate power. No Hitler or Churchill can do anything to change that.

What, then, has Churchill achieved? The economic, social and political problems remain broadly the same as 90 years ago — war, want, insecurity are as current now as when he was born. Perhaps there was some truth in the description of him by another, similarly unsuccessful and similarly revered, capitalist politician, Aneurin Bevan: “the mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his words.”

Churchill was a member of the British capitalist class and he served his class well. He maintained a constant anti-working class attitude throughout his life. In the military and foreign fields he was no more successful than other possible leaders. He became the spokesman for British capitalism during a period when its future was endangered, and used his gift for words to spur the working class to greater efforts for the benefit of their masters.

In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit–religious, political, press and radio–have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in so doing to pay homage to future leaders and to the principle of leadership.

Here perhaps we may rephrase Bevan’s comment, and apply it to all leaders—The failure of their actions is concealed by the majesty of their promises.

Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences—not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, is it a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And it will remain so, until the same workers who are now deluded into an hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally.

Ken Knight

Who needs leaders? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Major looks like he’s in deep trouble with his party. But what difference does a change of leadership make to the operation of Capitalism?

Who would you like to be Prime Minister of Great Britain? Or leader of the Labour Party? Of the Liberal Democrats? And when you have made your choice ask yourself why — not why you chose that particular person but why you bothered to make a choice. Ask yourself what persuaded you that whoever is nominally in charge of things makes any noticeable difference to what happens to us.

We ask these questions in response to the present void in both Conservative and Labour parties, in which they are wracked with doubt over whether their recent choice of leader was advisable. In both parties the doubts have triggered off the usual frenzied but surreptitious campaigning by aspirants to the leadership, while they all deny any such ambitions and profess undying loyalty to the leader.

This is especially noticeable in the Tory Party because, as the government, their mistakes, disputes and obvious impotence to control capitalism are so clearly exposed. This is not good for John Major, who came to be Prime Minister on the assumption — which he encouraged — that his government's style would be different from Thatcher's and that this would ensure it would be more successful in tackling current problems like unemployment, housing, shortage of medical services and so on. His lack of success makes it embarrassing for Tories to remember his promise in November 1990, to lead "a nation at ease with itself.

After nearly three years of his government whatever the nation is at case with it is not John Major, whose popularity is at the point where it causes friction in his and a campaign lo replace him much as Thatcher was replaced. One seasoned MP tells of the day when a senior Tory minister advised him never to forget that loyalty was the party's secret weapon. Of an enquiring mind, this MP soon realized that the opposite is the ease — that the Tories are as disloyal and ruthless when they decide their leader is likely to lose them seats in parliament. When it gets down to it that is why Thatcher had to go and why Major’s job is in jeopardy.

The relentless and fruitless search for the perfect leader is, like so many of the delusions which bolster the capitalist system, clearly influenced by prejudice. For example, nothing in a leader appeals to British people so much as an apparent firmness of purpose. But when that same characteristic is shown by an "enemy" leader — like Saddam Hussein, it is a very different matter. Saddam, says the prejudice was not firm and consistent in his policies; he was mad, just like all the other bogeymen of the Sun and similar papers.

In any case, how valid are the memories of Thatcher single-handedly beating off all those mad, grasping foreigners and doing something called "putting the great back in Great Britain"? The decline of British capitalism since the First World War has done much to fashion the political history of this country. In one way or another every government has had to accept, and work with, that reality. Some have done this more readily than others; some have skilfully practised deceit on the issue, so that the voters were convinced they were not doing what they were.

Part of this deceit has been in the speeches of leaders who have suggested that the decline in British power was avoidable and that they could reverse the trend. This posture has not been confined to the Tories; Harold Wilson, especially during his first spell in power, consistently talked about British power and the British economy forcing their way to the top in the world. At times he was so absorbed in this crazy notion that his voice lost its Yorkshire twang and took on a Churchillian growl when he spoke about it.

The idea is to conceal reality so that all those voters who are deluded into thinking that if Britain is a super power they will become super-workers will gratefully vote for a Wilson or a Thatcher. For her entire period in Number Ten Thatcher was one of the cleverest at hiding the reality and persuading British workers that it could be avoided. That was why so many of them voted for her. But the deception is self-perpetuating because it reinforces the notion that the decline — or the rise — of a capitalist power is not a matter of history but of political policy. The assumption is then that the collapse of the British Empire would not have happened had it not been for feeble egalitarians such as Clement Attlee is mistakenly supposed to have been. It is a delusion which does not help to understand the place and the function of leaders nor what happens under capitalism.

And that brings us to the crucial question of how useful are leaders. Do they really change the course of events? One field in which they are confident they have control is the economy. When things are going badly — when British capitalism is in recession or a financial crisis — the Chancellor of the Exchequer assures us that they have the remedy; trust them and all will be well. And when things are going well — when there is a boom — they claim the credit, saying it is due to their skill and intelligence.

About a year ago British capitalism went through a crisis which has come to be known as Black Wednesday. It was a day when a panic-stricken Chancellor (who, as one of those clever political leaders, is supposed never to gel in a panic) ended a succession of juggling with interest rates by withdrawing sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was supposed to be yet another example of politicians’ skill but in fact it happened only a short while after the Chancellor — the hapless Norman Lamont — and John Major had lectured us on the theme that the only way to prosperity for us all was lo keep sterling in the ERM. They were in no doubt about this quite sure that sterling would not be taken out of the ERM. Now many Tory politicians are asserting that the withdrawal is an example of their cleverness and that things for British capitalism are better as a result. For example, Norman Lamont is now very clear on the issue, urging “the Prime Minister to stand up and say once and for all that Britain should never again have anything to do with a single currency. Then we could all sing in the bath" (Well he was writing in the Sun).

Parasitic minority

Different conclusions have been drawn from that muddle, as from all the other episodes of similar chaos which regularly burst on the scene, stimulating more speeches, lectures and promises from political leaders. But only one conclusion fits the facts. No matter how clever and learned leaders may be, they can have no significant effect on how capitalism works and how it affects us. This social system works to its own priorities, to the benefit of a small parasitic minority. It cannot be controlled or manipulated. The cleverer leaders may be able to conceal this for a time; the not so clever — like Lamont and Major — can’t conceal it and that is why they arouse such contempt. To choose one leader against another is to choose one style of futility before another. It would be better to abandon the whole sorry mess and opt instead for efficacy for our own ability to change society so that we operate it, trusting ourselves to run the world for ourselves.

Ivan

Tories in search of a policy (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conferences of the major political parties are convenient and useful affairs. Delegates make speechlets on the ”Platform’s” proposals without really affecting them in any way. Other delegates politely listen. On occasions they even clap or cheer these speechlets. Such a social gathering helps to generate a feeling of amity and good-fellowship suggestive of the atmosphere of the Annual Outing or “Beano.” For the party leaders it is an admirable sounding-board by which to magnify their personal influence over their followers. It also enables them to indulge in those spell-binding speeches which do so much to rekindle the fires of their supporters’ political enthusiasm. Fires, which often tend between one Conference and another to burn dangerously low.

This, of course, really covers the water front of the Brighton Conservative Conference. Nevertheless, incidentals arising from it might paint a moral or adorn a tale.

Bernard Shaw’s “A Black Girl in search of God” has nothing on a Tory Party in search of a Policy. In the past such mundane things as detailed policies have rarely troubled them. Maintenance of Law and Order ; Preservation, of Our Glorious Empire; and an occasional red-herring like Tariff Reform have been considered ample for securing votes. With these and other nebulous promises they successfully moved the Electorate. Neither can they claim that the Electorate have been unduly fickle or faithless. Apart from two short and not highly significant breaks of the 1924 and 1929 Labour Governments the Tories enjoyed political power for eighteen years. Forty-odd years of Labour Party “Nationalisation” propaganda, among other things, provided some useful spade-work for digging a hole round the Conservative castle. It was through this hole that the Tory majority finally disappeared. The working class at length decided to give “Labour” a chance at running things.

The need of finding a rival policy to attract votes from the Labour Party has caused consternation in the Conservative ranks. Last year, at Blackpool, they began their search for one. This year’s Conference has shown it is not to be found in Brighton. To be restored as the “rightful claimants” of political power by the Tories time-honoured expedient of holding a successful General Election Inquest on the Labour Government's failures, appears the only hope.

Unfortunately for the Tories their failure to find some concrete alternative to the Labour Party programme lies deeper than any apparent inability to formulate one. The need of British Monopoly Capitalism compels the State to become more and more an active partner in its affairs, and so unify the diverse elements in accordance with the requirements of capitalism as an economic unit. This leads to that rigorous uniformity of political measures which is so marked a feature of modern capitalist administration. The main task of alternative Government is in essentials to supplement and extend what the last Government began.

Thus it can be said of any real alternative policies for running Capitalism what a geological text book once said of “Snakes in Iceland”—”there are none.” That is why, to use an Irishism, the more the Tories are different from the Labour Party the more do they seem the same thing—only even more so.

The Tories claimed that their Charter was “a bold advance in political and social affairs.” The merest cursory glance shows it to be a retreat into the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of vapid platitudes and cloudy generalisations. Mr. Eden once again took on the role of drummer-boy for the Tory, Brave New World. Although sounding the tocsin valiantly he could produce nothing more than The Need of Real Leadership : a Properly Balanced Budget; More Production, and Streamlined Controls. All of which led the Manchester Guardian (3/10/47) to say: “The seven points of the Charter would have been subscribed with equal fervour by most members of the Labour Party.”

Even the Tory Daily Telegraph could only lamely underscore Mr. Eden’s speech by saying that “in the first essentials of Government the Conservatives could provide better men.” It also significantly commented : “an alternative Government can be found which will either do other and better things—or the same things better.” This suggests that the Conservative Campaign will boil down in essentials to the exhortation: “Play the game you Labour cads. It’s our turn to bat.”

Because political parties exist for the requirements of Capitalism as a whole the Tories could not afford to indulge in sterile controversy about the alleged principles of Nationalisation. The Telegraph simply stated :—”Nationalisation had gone far. enough.” The mines will not, then, be denationalised in the event of a Tory Government. Likewise no indication was given that Railways, Electricity or Gas would be returned to Private Enterprise or, more correctly, Private Monopoly. Neither have they suggested that shareholders in the Bank of England or stockholders in Cables and Wireless should yield up good Government scrip signed by a Treasury official for something signed by a company director. As for the suggestion of denationalising the Steel Industry time will come for that when the Labour Government has finally made up its own mind on the matter of nationalising it.

Such a decision to preserve the already accomplished projects of the’ Labour Party implies, no reversal of the economic traditions of the British Capitalist Class. Whether it bo the Post Office, the B.B.C., Municipal Gas or Electricity, Governments in the past have never hesitated to take them from private control where it has been thought necessary for the interests of the Capitalist Class as a whole. If further evidence was needed there is Mr. MacMillan’s book, “The Next Five Years,” suggesting that Armaments, Transport, some forms of Insurance, and Electricity, were suitable for State Control. Mr. Churchill in the 1918 Election also urged a measure of State Control over all monopolies, especially Transport and Power, a fact which the adroit Mr. Morrison reminded them of in the House of Commons Debate on The Address. (Times, 21/11/46.)

Even the Tory cry of “Give Private Enterprise a chance” merely echoes the Labour Party’s oft repeated claim of leaving, after Nationalisation schemes had been carried through, eighty per cent. of Industry in Private Control. Mr. Morrison informed his own electors at Lewisham that Nationalisation must be carried through where necessary in the interests of efficiency, but most of Industry should remain private and prosperously enterprising. (The Economist, 10/5/47.)

The Tories also propose to retain Controls even, to the point of “streamlining them.” Mr. Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, has also announced : “Controls will be streamlined.” (Evening News, 7/10/47.)

Even that last stronghold of Toryism—Imperial Preferences—has fallen. It has been taken in the rear by that doughty “Empire Free Trade” Crusader, Mr. Bevin. Perhaps the bitterest quarrel that may yet ensue between “Labour” and Tory may be over who are “the true breed” of our great Imperial Traditions. Mr. Eden taunted the Labour Party with the fact that they are mere recruits who have only recently begun to think imperially. (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47.) The Daily Herald (3/10/17) stung to the quick of its Imperial pride, retorted that “unlike the Tories who have only thought Imperially, the Labour Party acted Imperially.”

The leading article of the same issue told its readers that the Tories had put forward no practical measures beyond those already put in force by the Labour Government. Indeed its general tenor was to the effect that the Conservative proposal really supported what the Labour Government were doing. It is surely a strange logic by which to justify its own policy. How often in the past have Labour Party spokesmen condemned the Tory Party as the Party of Wealth and Privilege?

It now finds that acceptance by the “wealthy” and “privileged” of their main planks is a source of comfort and even congratulation. For the honest and humble “Labour” stalwart the fact that his party shares so much common political ground with ”The Traditional Enemies” of the working-class should be a source of embarrassment and shame.

There is, of course, the vexed problem of rival bidding for working class votes. While the Tories may not want to offer more inducements than their Labour Party rivals they cannot make it seem that they are offering less. In a class system of exploitation based on private property ownership of the means of living they propound the tragic jest of a nation-wide community of property owners. Mr. Eden in his opening speech (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47) could offer no more than some future vague ownership of largely mythical houses for the working class, and the dangerous expedient of Co-partnership and Profit Sharing.

Ownership by workers of their habitation does not mean ownership of the means of living. It is only ownership of mills, factories, railways, raw materials, etc., which constitute that. These things are the monopoly of a privileged class and provide the sole means which enable them to live on the unpaid labour of the workers. This class privilege will remain as long as Capitalism endures.

Co-partnership is equally a tasteless joke. There can be no partnership between owners of the instruments of wealth production and non-owners. Evidently the Conservatives view it as a means to stimulate greater productive activity from the workers. But, as The Economist (12/10/46) in dealing with the Tory pamphlet on the subject said, “There is nothing to show that such schemes would be more successful in the future or as a means to incentive for greater production.” The Economist even agreed that Co-partnership as it stands “is an empty mockery.” It will, of course, remain an empty mockery under whatever form it appears. They commented that the Tories had much to learn about Industrial Psychology. They even suggested “Sir Stafford Cripps knew a lot more about how to get increased output from the workers.” Recent events might -suggest how right they were.

As befits a great leader, Mr. Churchill repeated his Blackpool performance by absenting himself from the three days’ Conference proceedings. The old gentleman nevertheless turned up as usual on the Saturday afternoon. The delegates then enjoyed a rare display of oratorical fireworks. So a good time was had by all.

Mr. Churchill, as an accomplished political quack of long standing, had no difficulty in showing to the satisfaction of those present, that the famous “Tory blue powders” were superior in every way to the Labour Party’s “pink pills.”

According to an American authority on the subject the rate of output of suckers is one per minute. Undoubtedly if increased production could be applied here it would greatly assist the Tory “Confidence men” to pull off their political “Three Card Trick” once again.

It has been suggested in what may be well informed quarters that an early Conservative election victory might in the long run prove disastrous for them. The return of either a Tory or Labour Government will certainly prove disastrous for the real interests of the working-class; both in the long run—or short run.

Ted Wilmott

Voice From the Back: The benefits of globalisation (2001)

The Voice From the Back column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The benefits of globalisation

“With a “catastrophe” in the world’s trade and many growers facing starvation, a leading coffee buyer appealed to the International Coffee Organisation in London yesterday for a tax of $1 on a 50kg bag to save farmers . . . “It is a huge and wealthy industry, yet the beans are grown almost entirely by very poor people who receive hardly anything for their labours.” . . . Prices have halved to $75 a bag this year, mainly because of a World Bank-financed drive to plant coffee in Vietnam. Production has risen from 4m bags to 16m. Big firms, including Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee, which owns Douwe Egberts, have kept prices up to benefit shareholders while the price to growers has halved.” Guardian (27 September). The rich get richer and the impoverished producers get poorer. Sound familiar? The answer isn’t a $1 tax but the complete transformation of society from one based on production for profit to one based on production solely for use.

Futile reforms

“The recovery of the ozone layer could be delayed significantly because the chemicals produced to replace those banned in the Montreal Protocol are proving equally damaging and are not controlled by international law, the UN Environment Programme reported.” Times (17 October). Another example of how reforms often don’t solve the problems of capitalism and another reason to get rid of it.

Save the children

During October the charity organisation Save The Children mounted a massive publicity drive to raise funds. According to their appeal “Around the world today, one in four children live in poverty – poverty serious enough to blight their lives just as they are beginning. Poverty can leave children without enough food to eat, rob them of the chance to go to school and force them into poorly paid work – vulnerable to adult abuse and exploitation.” How abusive can be gauged by the experience of a nine year old who worked for two years as a sari embroiderer, fell sick, was sent home and was paid nothing for 2 years work. The charity’s solution – send £3 a month! If only these well-meaning people would look beyond the effects of poverty to its cause we might really be able to save the children.

Same old Tories

Anyone who thought that two crushing electoral defeats would change the core policies of the Conservative Party can rest assured that the old Tory Party is sticking by its principles – support the rich against the poor. The columnist Matthew Parris writing in the Times (10 October) on their annual conference illustrated that very well when he observed: “The Shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard, railed yesterday against a Government he accused of leaving people to die in the queue for heart treatment – and was met with stony silence. Then he scolded the Government for cheating the shareholders of Railtrack – and was greeted by applause.”

Land of the free?

It reads like an Orwell-inspired dystopia, a nightmarish piece of fiction, but it is a recent letter to the editor of a mass circulation magazine. It reveals the frightening mind-set of some workers scared by the World Trade Towers disaster. Capitalism breeds paranoia and xenophobia, but even by capitalism’s standards the following is pretty scary stuff. “Our people must take an active part in the vigilant protection of our country. Civilians must assume roles in our civil defense as block watchers, neighborhood police, campus observers and providers of information to authorities about those who act suspiciously or who voice anti-American opinions.” Patrick Grant, New York City. Time Magazine (15 October).

More waste makers

Many years ago in his book The Waste Makers, Vance Packard wrote about “planned obsolescence”; the artful dodge of manufacturing products that needed to be replaced all the time. Some 40 years later we have the perfect example of this in the music business. Concerned about the misuse and selling on of the latest singles released to music executives for compiling play lists, the ingenious boffins of the music business have come up with a cunning ploy. “Tornado, the distributor of digital media products, has found a way of making Mission Impossible come to life. It has designed a voice recording that self-destructs after it has been played.” Sunday Times (7 October). There is no limit to the ingenuity of capitalism when it comes to protecting profits. Inside socialism, human inventiveness will be used for something more important than Mission Impossible recordings.

Classless society?

In his recent book Almost Like A Whale the geneticist Steve Jones comes up with some figures on land ownership that would seem to contradict those who argue that we live in a classless society where the barriers of ownership have been broken down. “Half the private land in Scotland is owned by three hundred and fifty people (in a country where half the population has no landed property at all); and the greatest proprietor of all, at a quarter of a million acres, is the Duke of Buccleuch. The Duke’s lesser titles include a couple of Earldoms, a Barony or two – and the Lordship of Eskdale”

Greasy Pole: Death of a Buffoon (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quintin McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone in the City of London, who was “a sweet, dear man” (Woodrow Wyatt); a “political genius” (Harold Macmillan); a “cantankerous old man” (Margaret Thatcher); “a gentleman” (himself) died last month. He was 94 years old and his life was richly productive of the kind of material beloved of fawning obituarists, who did him full justice. By the time we had absorbed that he was a kind, effervescent, clever, intellectual giant we could only wonder how the world would survive without him. Could it really go on, with its wars and disease and poverty, untouched by the death of one of capitalism’s more arrogant and volatile politicians? Should we not reproach ourselves for failing to value this paragon more appropriately when he was alive? Except that Hailsham, was not quite like his admirers make him out to be.

He came of a family of lawyers and politicians and ended his career in politics seemingly welded to the Woolsack, holding the job of Lord Chancellor longer than anyone since the days of Lord Halsbury at the end of the 19th century: “. . . he couldn’t go on being that for ever” said an exasperated Margaret Thatcher when she was contemplating removing him from that office. His father held the same job in the 1920s and was the MP for St. Marylebone. His son Douglas is an MP and has held some minor ministerial jobs – although not to wide acclaim or without controversy. A daughter is a High Court judge. The Hogg family looks likely to carry on into infinity, producing volatile eccentrics who are willing to play their part in running British capitalism in the interests of the class they are born into.

Eton and All Souls

Hailsham was educated at Eton; where else could a boy like him have gone to school? He was said to be the cleverest pupil there, too clever for some of the masters and he was fully aware of it, being known as “. . . a disagreeable boy, academically clever, but emotionally arrogant and extremely self-centred”. Of course he was elected to Pop, that self-appointed aristocracy above the aristocrats of the school. Members of Pop wore fancy waistcoats and walked about arm in arm, they were fawned on by many of the masters and feared among the other boys for their arbitrary powers of flogging and the enforced servitude known as fagging. Clearly, Eton had little to teach the young Hailsham (or Hogg, as he was then, before succeeding to the title) about asserting himself as a member of the ruling class. He was notorious for the gusto and frequency with which he beat other boys (his half-brother, Edward Marjoribanks, was “passionate” about it and had a reputation for sadism). It was a useful education in guiltless suppression of anyone classified as socially inferior.

After collecting a succession of prizes at Eton which proved how clever he was Hailsham went to one of the more traditional of Oxford colleges, got a first class degree and was accepted as a Fellow of All Souls. This is a kind of Pope of the university, although more sober and industrious. It was founded in 1437 with the main purpose of praying for the dead (part of its landholdings include Willesden Junction, a grimy part of North West London where the inhabitants need rather more than prayers to give them some hope). Hailsham began his time among the brains of All Souls as a “Screw”, whose job was to decant the after dinner port which was drunk in such quantities. Places like All Souls, with their exclusivity and their rituals, play a part in informing the working class that they must accept their inferior status in society, the running of which should be left to their betters. How reliable a concept this is can be judged by the kind of politician to have passed through those privileged doors – recent examples were Keith Joseph and John Redwood, who have gone down in history as eccentric blunderers. We shall see how Hailsham measured up to the popular expectations of him.

Suez

He burst onto the political scene as Conservative candidate in a bye-election at Oxford City in 1938, supporting the Chamberlain policy of “appeasement” of Nazi Germany against an all-party candidate. This took some living down later, when appeasement became a nasty word and Chamberlain was universally unpopular. Hailsham survived the war with a slight wound and continued as an MP with a reputation as a kind of verbal blunderbuss in his attacks on the Labour government. Some time after the Tories won power he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, which pandered to his need to behave like an attention-seeking adolescent. But behind his posturing the fact was that, although he was one of the Service ministers he was kept in the dark about the secret negotiations between Britain, France and Israel which laid the plans to justify the Suez invasion. Hailsham denounced the Egyptian take-over of the Suez Canal as “wholly illegal” (as if such concepts are of the slightest consequence in capitalism’s wars) and never doubted that Britain and France were right to “intervene” (as he called it) in the war between Israel and Egypt. It was not the most penetrating analysis of that sordid affair.

Under Macmillan’s prime ministership Hailsham, who succeeded to the title when his father died in 1950, was given the kind of jobs which could have paved his way to the top. Appointed party chairman, he seized the opportunity to engage hysterically with the membership. In 1957 at the Tory conference in Brighton he made his first appearance in the early morning on the beach, wearing baggy trunks and plunging briskly into the sea for a swim. It was not coincidence that he was accompanied (although not into the water – there are limits to the call of duty) by a posse of newspaper hacks. At the end of that conference Hailsham grabbed the chairman’s bell and rang it in a frenzy, declaiming the poet’s words about who the bell tolls for – meaning the Labour Party. The party faithful loved it, stamping their feet and cheering but others – particularly his rivals in the party – were sourly uneasy at his vulgar publicity-seeking.

Flat Cap

This behaviour was rewarded in 1963 when Hailsham was given not one, but two, jobs involving responsibility for sport and for injecting some hope into the North East, where unemployment was at 4.5 percent compared to 2.4 percent nationally. The region’s most important industries – steel, shipbuilding, coal – were in decline. Hailsham was not a sportsman – he regarded the very idea of a minister of sport as akin to fascism – and he was not an economist. This did not disqualify him from holding the jobs but it did make the appointment look like a typical piece of Macmillan gimmickry. Hailsham did nothing to dispel this by touring the region wearing the kind of flat cap usually seen in working men’s clubs, or the dole queues. Later he tried to explain this away as a matter of chance; he had left his bowler hat in his car in London and was offered a choice of a pork pie hat or the cap. He chose the cap because it would be useful when he was out shooting. But the impression endured, that he was either making fun of the hard-pressed workers there or was clumsily trying to convince them that in spite of his Eton education and his large house in Sussex he was really one of them. “I do not pretend” he wrote later “that the plan (which he drew up after his visit) succeeded to the extent that my visit to the North East permanently solved the chronic difficulties of the region”. Well no, it didn’t but at least he got a nice new cap out of it, for his times on the grouse moors.

Later that year his big chance arrived, when Macmillan decided to resign and the Tory party descended into the kind of frenzied back-stabbing which should have had no place in what was called, in the days before Thatcher, the gentleman’s party. It all happened at their 1963 conference where, after Macmillan’s announcement, the atmosphere was, according to William Rees Mogg, “ugly”. Hailsham was Macmillan’s first preference as his successor but he had to get rid of his title and return to being plain Mr. Quintin McGarel Hogg. Without following the custom of first informing the rest of the cabinet he launched his bid for the top job in a carefully stage-managed announcement at the end of an otherwise dull meeting, which erupted into hysterical applause at the news. Randolph Churchill roamed the conference pinning large badges with the letter Q onto anyone unwise enough to stand still within arms reach. Hailsham got himself photographed spoon feeding his one year old child in the hotel foyer. All of this was not to Macmillan’s taste and so from the chaos of ugliness emerged the unlikely figure of Douglas-Home. Hailsham had blown it.

Relief

Which must have been a relief to the many people who had him correctly summed up, not as a genius but an arrogant buffoon, isolated by his conceit from the real world around him. Throughout his life he was buoyed up by the assumption that he and the rest of his class were superior, born to rule in the best of all possible worlds which is capitalism. The rest of us should only be grateful that there are people like Hailsham who are willing to exploit, degrade and ridicule us. To anyone concerned for society and its people Hailsham will not be missed.

Ivan

Deals and Lawyers (2025)

Book Review from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cuckooland: Where the Rich Own the Truth. By Tom Burgis. William Collins £10.99.

In December 2022 we reviewed Burgis’ Kleptopia, which examined the machinations of the super-rich to acquire and hide their wealth, with special attention to Kazakhstan. Here he looks at similar activities in a variety of countries. The idea behind the title is that a cuckoo has to get another bird to think that the cuckoo’s egg is its own, thus relying on an illusion, similar to the way in which some people present two versions of themselves.

Others are mentioned, but the focus is on Mohamed Amersi, who is a ‘dealmaker’ in the telecommunications industry. In an emerging market (which Burgis defines as a country where lots of poor people live) there are plenty of opportunities for selling mobile phones for the first time. In former USSR provinces, such as Uzbekistan, telecom licences can be obtained through contacts of various kinds, and Amersi charges a Swedish corporation a ‘success fee’ of half a million dollars. Never mind that the company later paid a massive fine because its partner in Uzbekistan was in fact the daughter of the country’s dictator (all hidden in a shell company in Gibraltar). Amersi did very well out of all this, as the company paid him $63m dollars over six years. As Burgis says, recessions do not happen to the rich.

The second part of the book deals with how the wealthy make and maintain links with politicians and other powerful people (‘access capitalism’). For instance, the Conservatives’ Leaders Group provides monthly lunches with ministers for a mere £50,000 a year. Or you could pay to attend a cheese-tasting session with Liz Truss (no longer available, perhaps). A company called Quintessentially satisfies the whims of the global elite, such as a football signed by Lionel Messi. But things do not always work out as planned. Amersi became involved in a dispute with Charlotte Leslie, a former Tory MP, over which organisation should be in charge of Conservative relations with the Middle East. He sued her for ‘disseminating false and misleading information’, but his suit was dismissed, the judge saying that his actions ‘give real cause for concern’.

This is an example of what is sometimes called ‘lawfare’: the rich and powerful intimidate those who write about them by means of lawsuits which may involve incredibly high legal fees. Even if the lawsuit fails, those who have been subject to it will have undergone a period of anxiety and stress, fearful of being bankrupted, and so may in future decide it is easier not to ruffle the feathers of the elite. Newspaper editors may prefer that their journalists not get involved in such cases. The term used is SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). So, as in the book’s subtitle, the truth is a matter of legal and financial power rather than actual facts on the ground. (Another example would be Trump’s recent attempt to sue US newspapers for billions of dollars.)

A well-argued insight into some of the ways in which some rich people acquire and protect their wealth.

Paul Bennett

Running Commentary: Plenty (1986)

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

Plenty

Just as the news came in of yet another desperate famine in Africa, it was reported that the EEC are about to try to reduce their 1,360,000 tonne butter mountain by selling the stuff, at 3p a pound, as food for calves. EEC officials argue that this is the best way to dispose of the butter — best because it is cheaper than stockpiling it.

You did not need to be exceptionally perceptive to work out that what is being suggested is that the butter, after being kept in store for some time, be fed back to the animals who produced it in the first place.

There is nothing unreasonable or illogical about this. It fits in perfectly well with the assumptions and needs of commodity production — the turning out of wealth for sale on the market so as to yield a profit for the class who own the means of life. In this system the market — not human needs — decides when there is a shortage or a surplus. That the EEC is grappling with the problem of mountains and lakes of stuff which could feed human beings does not mean that everyone in the world is properly fed. It simply means that the market has more than it can profitably deal with, which is a very different matter.

It is by no means uncommon for food to be stockpiled or, if the market demands it, destroyed while there is an urgent human need for it. Sometimes — like the butter — it is returned where it came from. Vegetables are ploughed into the earth or fish thrown back into the sea. A neat, circular solution you might think — just what all those highly trained experts and economists are paid to think up. Until you look at the pictures of those people starving; the children only hours away from death staring out from shrunken, fly-swarming eyes, the emaciated adults squatting in their final apathy.

Then you know that something is wrong, that somewhere there is an obvious answer which is being evaded. And you are right. But think about it a bit more and ask yourself, who is doing the evading?

Cut price ignorance

Anyone who is thinking about buying a few shares in newly privatised concerns like British Gas, Jaguar and the National Freight Corporation had better brace themselves to receive a letter from Norman Tebbit. The Tory Party chairman, presumably believing that the most impoverished of workers can be kidded that owning some shares makes them a capitalist, will be trying to scare them with bogeyman stories about Labour snatching their dividends to give to lazy dole-queue scroungers.

If you think this smacks of desperation, what about the other scheme at Tory HQ. to attract new recruits by offering them a clutch of cut-price offers? Sign on the blue dotted line and you'll be eligible for a cheap subscription rate to the Countdown discount organisation; the chance to buy gift hampers; membership of a wine society; copies of Jeffrey Archer's books, personally signed by the world's greatest living writer (it is not clear whether this is intended to persuade people into the Tory Party or the Workers' Revolutionary Party).

Of course Labour supporters are having a great time poking fun at all this, on the lines that the Tory Party which was once a marriage bureau is now a mail order company. Well, nobody can argue with that but they should remember that all capitalist parties use a variety of tricks and inducements to get workers to join them.

You can join the Labour Party, for example. by simply signing a form brandished at you by some canvasser on your doorstep. A few minutes later, if you were getting a lot of attention from canvassers, you could join the Conservative Party in the same way. Your opinions need not come into it; the capitalist parties are interested in your support — your vote, your money, your membership.

It is difficult to understand, or to empathise with, workers who fall for this, who allow their intelligence to be insulted in this way and who regard so lightly their political power to transform society.

Capitalism's problems can be solved only by a social revolution. That needs mass consciousness. leading to a deliberate act by the world working class. That is fundamentally different from the sordid grubbing for votes which absorbs so much of the energy of the likes of the Labour and Tory Parties. The question is — how long will the workers allow themselves to be seduced away from their historic role by tawdry offers of cheap wine, food and political thrills? How long will they abandon their revolutionary function for a mess of Jeffrey Archer?

Kick off

Every schoolchild brought up on Henry Newbolt's foolish poem about playing the game knows that the British are great ones for courtesy and sporting behaviour. It is something to do with character building on the playing fields of Eton, and the historic mission of the British Empire to bring civilisation to the lesser breeds without the law.

The snag is that most of the people of this country did not go to Eton, or to any school like it. Their character was built in the sort of neighbourhoods and schools which Newbolt did not care much to write about. They get their living in ways which essentially deprive them of the satisfaction of a sense of affinity with what they must devote most of their waking hours to.

This alienation extends beyond the workplace. into every part of our lives. In a world which is owned and controlled by "them", what does it matter if the saplings which were planted to give a little relief to the eyes amid a wasteland of concrete are tom up? Or if the street lamps which are there to make the pavements safer to walk along are smashed? Or if the ugly slabs of building which they call home are defaced with spray- can graffiti?

It also permeates what might be called their leisure time activities, when for a brief time they may forget their lowly status in society and the aridity of their social prospects. Where better to do this than on the terraces at some football game, with its excitement, glamour and its aura of quick riches?

British followers of the game are famous, not for their sporting attitudes but for such activities as running riot (although not as wildly as the media would have it) in one of the plushest of those floating duty-free supermarkets which ply between this country and the Continent.

This sort of behaviour has now reached the status of a ritual without which no self-respecting football (and soon, perhaps, cricket) match is complete The responses, too, are ritualistic, spurred on by headline-hungry journalists. The popular assumption, for which evidence is conspicuously lacking, is that sterner punishment and more vicious judicial violence are the only measures which can be trusted to bear in on the minds of the riotous football fans.

The people who call for hooligans to be beaten into servility forget those times when worse than yobbishness against foreign workers is officially encouraged — when, for example, the habit of Ghurka soldiers in the Falklands to kill any Argentinians who surrendered to them was gloatingly reported as good, clean, military fun.

It is capitalism which alienates us all — a social system of privilege and repression which is maintained with ritualistic support from the working class: "I vote Labour because my father always did '; "My husband's a Conservative and I can't go against him. can I?"

All this viciousness and self-destruction is protected in swathes of cynicism, from the beginning of our lives until the end. That is why schoolchildren are still being encouraged to absorb patriotic ravings like Newbolt's. Play up. and play the game? Ugh.

Tories : No holds barred (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like someone picking at a scab, the Tories seem unable to forget their leadership controversy.

Even the declarations of unity—almost every weekend at least one Conservative M.P. tells a meeting somewhere what a sound fellow Sir Alec Douglas-Home is—only draw attention to the fact that the controversy is still going on. The most ardent of speeches merely succeeds in suggesting that, if Home were not under fire, there would be no need for such a show of loyalty towards him.

It is, in fact, an established tradition—and one with good political reason—in the Conservative Party always to do their best to present a united front against all comers. Sometimes, it is true, we get a glimpse of knives flashing in the background behind this front; but generally the Tories do not treat us to the spectacle of the glorious public rows which the Labour Party have indulged in.

The Tories have always posed as the gentleman’s party, implying that, whatever the difficulties, they know how to behave themselves. This should deceive nobody. Precisely because they are a political party aiming to run capitalism, and especially because they are never far from the seat of power, the Conservatives, collectively and individually, must be as ruthless as anyone else.

They have had their share of leaders who have filled this particular bill for example Stanley Baldwin, who played the political game with a relentless cunning under the guise of a pipe-sucking, ruminative, honest countryman. More recently, too, the gentleman’s party have had their tough infighters. There was a lot of truth in the crack from Harold Wilson (who knows a thing or two about this subject himself) that whenever Macmillan, when he was Prime Minister, came back from abroad, Mr. Butler hurried to the airport to grip him warmly by the throat.

At the moment there is obviously a bitter struggle going on for the leadership of the Conservative Party. From some points of view this may appear as a battle between Maudling, Heath and McLeod for the succession after Home has gone. Whether or not this is true, a battle to succeed Home may of itself be enough to unseat him.

Sir Alec, it seems, wants to stay, although some political correspondents whisper that he is weary of it all and is only waiting for his troublesome underlings to decide who is to take his place and then he will fade away into the substantial shadows of Coldstream. It is possible that Home’s hand was forced into agreeing to the new method of electing future Tory leaders—something unknown in a party which, as befits gentlemen, has always relied upon discreet soundings rather than an open vote.

Home assured us that, although he was very pleased with the new election plan, he did not think highly enough of it to allow it to apply to himself. He, who came to the leadership through the customary processes of consultation, was not going to risk losing it all in a vulgar, demotic election. Perhaps there is some political sense in this. If Home agreed to stand, and was opposed, the split in the Tory ranks would be revealed for all to see. If he stood and lost . . . but that simply does not bear thinking about, in the deep leather armchairs of the Carlton. Better to leave the whole beastly thing alone.

The election plan was conceded only after a long period of agitation. Men like Mr. Humphrey Berkeley were the frontrunners in this, but behind the scenes there must have been more powerful—and more hopeful—voices also pressing for the same thing. Of course, when it was all settled all good Tories made the best of it, claiming that they had found an ultra-democratic method of electing their leader. They forgot that they had always insisted that the method they were abandoning gained a far clearer assessment of opinion in their party, and was therefore more democratic, than any simple election.

They also forgot—or ignored—the fact that leadership has nothing to do with democracy. All capitalist parties agree that it is necessary to have a leader, and that it is his job to lead. But this means that the leader must often go against popular wishes, for what is the point of having a leader to take decisions if he is also supposed to take orders from the people he is leading?

The Tories clear up this point very simply, by making no secret of the fact that they intend to run—and perhaps reform—capitalism from day to day as they think fit, with no reference to their members. The Labour Party used to have a different line. Their members were supposed to have a voice in deciding their policy; some of them may actually have thought that the decisions of a Labour conference would influence a Labour government. There is no room for doubt on this score now. Labour has made it clear that they will govern as British capitalism requires, and not at the dictates of their members, who are liable to get all sorts of woolly and inconvenient notions about keeping out of wars and sticking by election promises. Democracy, in other words has been put firmly in its place.

Home’s sudden elevation to the Premiership was attacked by many people, especially of course the Labour Party, on the grounds that he is an aristocrat. These attacks were based on the argument that aristocrats are bound to govern badly because they are aloof from the great mass of honest, horny handed people. The corollary of this is that political leaders who come from the ordinary people are sure to govern us wisely and equitably.

We do not have to work very hard to dispose of this delusion. Labour governments have always prided themselves in having more than one son of the toiling masses among their ranks. Sometimes these men have held top jobs, yet they have done them in much the same way as any High Tory aristocrat.

There was, for example, Jimmy Thomas, who was so proud of his engine driver background that he went around mislaying and misplacing as many aitches as he possibly could, much to the amusement of the opulent circles in which he moved. (He once complained, at a glittering social gathering, of having “an ’ell of an ’eadache”, whereupon the late Lord Birkenhead advised him to “go home and take an aspirate.”) Then there was Ernie Bevin, who cultivated the same habit, allied to a fondness for blunt speaking which recalled his beginnings as a farm labourer.

Neither of these men, when they were in power, did anything to encourage us to elect their like to office again. The interests of the British capitalist class had no more zealous defenders than they. They walked with kings but made sure that they did not lose the common touch, which was so useful at election times and when addressing the TUC.

All capitalist parties are wedded to the lie that this is the age of the Common Man. It is true that the Common Man sometimes gets to power, but when he does so he runs capitalism as ruthlessly—and often with a sight more cunning —than any landed lord. The Labour Party has always set the pace in propagating the lie, although nowadays their favourite badge is not so much the cloth cap as the scientist’s white coat. The Tories, too, are in on the deception. They produce tame trade unionists, and give them hopeless seats to fight at election time. They announced that their new chairman, Mr. du Cann, is an ex-grammar schoolboy. This was meant to convince us that they had a leader who had battled through the eleven plus to the sort of school which our own kids might go to. In fact, they were stretching the meaning of the term grammar school; the places where Edward Dillon Lott du Cann got his education—Colet Court and Woodbridge—represent something much more expensive than is open to the average working class child.

Thus, in many ways the dice may seem to be loaded against Sir Alec. Any mistakes he might make will be blamed onto his blue-blooded origins. Tory publicists do their best to cover up his faux-pas—his confession to doing his balance of payments sums with the aid of matches, his “little donation" speech, his half-moon glasses. They assure us that although Home may not have a great deal of political cunning, he is possessed of abundant integrity.

Those of us with longer memories, or with a thirst for the facts, will know that Home was one of the supporters of the 1938 Munich agreement, and that he needed something other than integrity when he was defending that agreement in the House. We also know that he was Secretary for Commonwealth Relations from 1955 to 1960, which means that he is firmly identified with the Suez double-cross, the Nyasaland fraud and all the other dirty deals which were pulled off during that period and subsequently, when he held higher office. In fact, one of the first things a capitalist politician must discard is his integrity.

In any case, honesty will not rescue Home. His position is insecure, there are hungry men waiting to pounce, and his party is in confusion. Amid this chaos, it is appropriate to state the facts on the leadership issue.

Leaders, whoever they are and whatever their party, exist because of the ignorance of their followers. But at the same time their actions must be confined within, and must not offend, that ignorance. At the present this does not cause any upsets because the people who are content to be led are also content to keep capitalism going.

But this means that the leaders, who often get power on promises to solve certain problems, are quite unable to keep their word. They must promise to safeguard peace at the same time as they are assiduously organising the production of weapons of war. They must promise to conquer capitalism’s economic upsets when in fact they have not the faintest idea of what to do about them.

It also means that they must cheat and lie; they must wholeheartedly engage in the ruthless game of politics. They must shake hands with their deadliest political enemy while keeping the other hand firmly on the safety catch—and while knowing that their enemy is doing the same. And all this must go on while they are professing, if they are Tories, to being a party of gentlemen, or if they are Labourites, to being the party of common humanity.

Mr. Enoch Powell, an M.P. who has the endearing habit of often blowing inconvenient gaffs which his colleagues find embarrassing in the extreme, once wrote:

. . . political purposes . . . are concerned with public opinion and the persuasion of large numbers. The politician’s business is not investigating and expounding facts for their own sake. Facts become relevant to his job only when people are ready to lake an interest in them, so that they become potential instruments of persuasion and action.

Sometimes the politicians succeed in convincing the working class that they are effective. Then they are canonised as great men. Often they fail. Then one leader is deposed, as Home may be deposed, to be replaced by another. But the essential of the situation—the repressive and degrading capitalist system- remains. The majority of people continue to be exploited and harassed and, peculiarly, to opt to stay like that.

As long as they have their leaders to show them the way into chaos, the workers are content. Home may go but the set-up which bore him and finished him will remain. The roundabout goes on and on, round and round, up and down. Only the man who is in charge of the engine changes occasionally. The sickening motion of the thing goes on, and will continue to do so until the passengers who are suffering from it all decide that they have had enough.

Ivan.

Passing Comments: Why we don’t get the coal (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why we don’t get the coal

The prospect of a coal crisis has produced the usual crop of enquiries about the coal industry. What exactly is wrong with it?

As might be expected, the Sunday Express has the answer. It has gone to the expense of sending a journalist, a Mr. Gwyn Lewis, on a three-week tour of the coalfields. Mr. Lewis has now produced his report: it appeared in the Sunday Express on February 4th.

The article covers nearly thirty-two inches of column-space; and more than three-quarters of it (over twenty-four inches) is taken up with complaints about the idleness of some of the miners. :If every man on the payroll did an honest day’s work the present hardships would have been greatly mitigated.” The article avoids statistics which would give the exact position over all the coalfields: instead, there are vague allegations, interspersed with figures applying only to single pits on single days, which are of no use at all to anyone who wants a true picture of the situation, but which are none the less valuable for propaganda purposes. This is the kind of thing: “In Midlands colliery towns I saw miners’ welfare institutes filled with men playing cards when they should have been working.” There are no details given with the aid of which one could check up on the accuracy of the observation. Which Midlands colliery towns? Which miners’ institutes, and how many of them? What exact number of men is the vague verb “filled” intended to convey? How did the reporter know they “should have been working?” After all, there are some men in a miner’s institute at every hour of the day: in the morning, the afternoon shift men, and in the afternoon and evening, the day and night shift men. Perhaps Mr. Lewis is skilled in telepathy; at any rate, his information did not come from the men themselves, for in his next sentence his complains that “when I tried to get their point of view I could only get ’whose deal?’ and a request not to interfere with the card-playing.”

* * *

Contrast

What a contrast this makes with the recent incident at a club which caters for another class of the population. On the one hand we have a group of miners, spending their leisure hours in their own institute, accosted by a Tory journalist who wants to know why they are not working harder: and all they do is to request him politely not to interfere with the game. And on the other hand a group of “gentlemen” in a London club last month were so incensed with the mere inoffensive presence of a man whose political views they consider too Leftish, that one of them, who learnt his manners at Eton and Oxford, made an unprovoked physical assault on him as he left.

* * *

Duties as Citizens

But to get back to these idle miners. A printed sheet was distributed to every one of them containing a New Year’s message from Mr. Attlee, appealing to him to work harder; but Coal Board officials say it has had no result. A Coal Board assistant director tells this woeful tale: “We tried giving the men lectures on their duties as citizens. Most of them listen, but some call out 'Tell us when you are finished.’ ” The lecturers’ task would probably be easier if the duties were the same for all the citizens. As it is, the miners can be forgiven for taking up a cynical attitude when they read an article by a man who hints that colliers are lazy because they are paid too much, but who doesn’t mention the £14,000,000 a year paid to the ex-coal-owners; and who says it is becoming a “common practice” for miners to take Monday off, and sometimes Friday as well, but who has no harsh remarks for the shareholders who take all seven days off and still draw an income.

* * *

No wage-earners need apply

Do you want to be a Conservative M.P.? You stand a poor chance if you come from the lower income groups.

“Comment,” which describes itself as a right-wing magazine run by undergraduates, has published in its January, 1951, number some statistics about the social background of the Conservative members of the House of Commons. Of the 298 M.P.s, the schools of 52 are unknown: but of those whose schools can be discovered, 214, or 87 per cent, went to public schools (including 79, or 32 per cent., to Eton). Again, of the 298 M.P.s, 62 per cent, went to Oxford, Cambridge, or “one of the military colleges—nearly always Sandhurst.”

The occupations of Tory M.P.s are also listed, though no attempt is made to divide them into two or three big groups; “Comment” says it would be difficult to know in which group to place a man “who is perhaps a landowner, director of a big industrial company, and was for ten years in the regular army." Readers of the Socialist Standard might enlighten the editors of “Comment” as to which social group an M.P. with these particular qualifications would belong. But the statistics given are quite interesting enough in themselves. 36 are farmers or landowners; 37 are in business; 16 are in industry; 17 are publishers. These groups provide 106 M.P.s, or 36 per cent, of the total number. Then there are 31 (or 10 per cent) from the Services, and 124 (42 per cent.) are professional„ men. Of those M.P.s who are not listed in any of the above categories, 6 are women, and 59 are put down as “unknowns’’—this figure, which" is 19 per cent., includes all the full-time politicians. Furthermore, “Comment” calculates that there are anything from 500 to 1,000 directorships spread among the 298 members.

* * *

Good opportunities for smart aristocrat

Even after five years of Labour Government with its “inevitable fall in the number of knighthoods and baronetcies conferred on Conservative members,” there are well over 100 M.P.s, more than a third of the total number, who “either hold titles themselves or are intimately related to title-holders.”

And how do these sirs and honourables get into Parliament? Elsewhere “Comment” quotes from a forthcoming book by Mr. Herbert Nicholas on the General Election; and it appears, even allowing for the fact that the Tory definition of “working-class” is more restricted than the Socialist definition, that 54 per cent. of those who voted Conservative last year are working-class electors (compared with 89 per cent. of the Labour voters). So both big parties get most of their support from wage-earners.

* * *

Incomes

Last October the Commissioners of Inland Revenue published their report for the year ended March, 1949; and according to this, in a country which some simple Labourites continue to refer to as “Socialist Britain,” there were eighty-six people left with an annual income exceeding £6,000 a year after payment of income-tax and surtax. There were more than five thousand people having incomes of between £80 and £120 a week, and nearly 80,000 with between £40 and £80 a week after payment of taxes. On the other hand, there are eight and a half million given as having incomes between £3 and £5 a week, and 1,113,000 with between £2 14s. and £3 after tax. Those with less than £135 a year are not mulcted of income-tax by a generous government, so they are not dealt with in the report.

* * *

How to suffer in style

These figures go some way towards explaining the news which appears every so often in the Tory papers about the activities of the rich, and form a strange commentary on the statement of the Continental Daily Mail (26-7-50) that “the wealthiest classes have been almost destroyed by the tax-collector.” If we believed the Continental Daily Mail we would find it difficult to understand how the Eton entry-list is filled up till 1963, when its costs £308 a year to send a boy there, “plus a small amount for extras ” (Daily Mail, 12-12-50); and why Harrod’s think it worth while to insert an eight-inch two-column advertisement in the Observer (11-2-51) devoted to the charms of a fur coat which costs £357—more than most workers get in a year; and how Sir Bernard and Lady Docker can afford to give an “epic” cocktail party at the Royal Thames Yacht Club, which was just large enough, so we are informed, to take the hundreds of guests, while motorists queued for a mile outside to get to the party (Sunday Express, 17-12-50). For good measure we are told, in the same paper eight weeks earlier, that Sir Bernard is having a car made specially for his wife, complete with cocktail cabinet, radio set, silver- equipped vanity case, bookshelf, and fluorescent lighting. Gallant Sir Bernard. And wealthy Sir Bernard. The car is costing £5,622.

* * *

Dodgers and super-dodgers

But the official figures apparently do not tell the whole story. The report issued by the income tax authorities cannot be wholly accurate if some people do not reveal their real incomes to the tax inspectors; and it seems that evasion is being practised on a large scale. One inspector of taxes says: “There are roughly 20,000 dodgers, but half the £40,000,000 withheld from the State each year can be accounted for by approximately 2,000 super-dodgers.” (Sunday Express, 31-12-50). This would make the super-dodgers withhold an average of £10,000 a year each. And what is the total income of a man who should pay tax at the rate of £200 a week”

Yet the Tories still tell us that the wealthiest have been almost destroyed.

* * *

Undesirable familiarity

It is comforting to think that Mr. Millard Caldwell, the head of US Civil Defence, has confidence in us. Mr. Caldwell said in London: “ You will find that your people will take atomic bombs just like they took others.” (Reynolds News, 11-2-51).

An official of the Ministry of Supply agreed with him. He said: “ It would be just the same as in the last war. The more familiar we get with atomic bombs, the easier they will be to deal with.” But just how familiar do we have to get with atomic bombs? J. Bronowski, writing in the Observer (4-2-51) says that whereas the type of atomic bomb used in the last war caused a circle of destruction only two miles across, a hydrogen bomb weighing a ton would “cause irreparable damage over a circle on the ground which measures twenty miles across.” That is to say, it could destroy London from Barnet to Croydon, and from Hounslow to Woolwich; and burns and fires from it would reach through a circle of thirty miles in diameter. Such a bomb dropped on London “would kill far more than 1,000,000 people.”

Has the Ministry of Supply worked out how many bombs of this size will have to be dropped before we consider ourselves familiar with them?

Alwyn Edgar