Molten Steel (1964)

Editorial from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the past few years, the steel industry has become a sort of political shuttlecock, bouncing back and forth between nationalisation and de-nationalisation. The last Labour government took it under State control and later on their Tory successors sold most of it back to private investors. Now, with the arrival of Wilson’s government, it looks as if steel may well be buffeted about the Commons again, and once more find itself a state industry.

Nationalisation of any industry is not something which is done in the interests of the working class, and is not therefore worthy of their support. The capitalist class may squabble among themselves about whether a particular industry is in need of state control, but these arguments revolve around investment, competitiveness, profitability, etc., things which are dear to any capitalist’s heart, but of no concern to workers. In the light of this, it is interesting to read the press reports of Parliament’s first debate on steel this session. There were fierce words and a government majority of seven, but pro-nationalisation sentiment was by no means confined to the Labour benches.

The burden of the government’s case was that steel had become a dangerous monopoly, keeping prices up and “holding the nation to ransom". Their answer is to create a state monopoly in place of the private one and so make sure that the capitalist class as a whole shall have direct control over it. From the capitalist point of view there is an argument for state control, at least of the main sections of the industry. The phenomenal growth of the motor car industry, for example, has highlighted the importance of steel in a highly competitive world. And if, as Mr. Lee claims, private investors are simply unable to find the huge sums for new plant and modernisation, then the state will have to step in and do it instead. An assured supply of cheap steel is vital to modern capitalist economy. Steel has, in fact, become a “basic industry”.

What of the attitude of the other parties in the Commons on this issue? In the debate of November 9th, the Tories said they were uncompromisingly opposed to the government’s proposals, but even their fiery spokesman Iain Macleod had to admit that whoever had won the election, there would have had to be “careful and detailed talks” with the steel bosses—in other words more state direction and control. Successive Conservative governments have never been slow to order the steel firms about anyway. It was at their insistence that the unprofitable Ravenscraig strip mill was foisted on Colvilles. The Liberal Party wants a truce in the fight, but is certainly not opposed to nationalisation in principle. That much was clear from Mr. Hooson’s speech. More competition is their cry, and a mixture of state and private enterprise, one battling against the other for sales.

There was a time when nationalisation was advocated by the Labour Party with a heavy accent on the benefits which they claimed would accrue to the workers. This was the case in the coal mines, for example; state control was supposed to be the only answer to the miners’ problems. In the case of steel this argument was barely whispered. Nobody bothered to use “workers” interests' even as a propaganda gimmick, and the arguments from all parts were almost entirely about the ability of British steel to maintain itself against foreign competition. Yet despite this, and the bitter disillusionment of other nationalised industries—particularly under Labour government—Mr. Lee was still able to claim the support of the unions in the steel industry for his government’s proposals.

The experience of nationalised industries should have shown the futility of supporting these measures. In the industries which have been taken over, workers are still in the same basic position as before. They still have to work for wages and their efforts to improve their pay and conditions are resisted just as stoutly by the government boards as by the old boards of directors. Capitalism continues unmolested and Socialism, in which all the means of production and distribution will be owned by society, is no nearer than before.

News in Review: Youth (1964)

The News in Review column from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

AT HOME

Youth

The latest news is it's with it to be young!

You can be a Mod or a Rocker and make a nuisance of yourself at the seaside in the summer. Or you can be a Beatles fan and make a nuisance of yourself, off and on, at London Airport all the year round.

You can twiddle your transistor and you can wear the latest snazzy clothes.

You can be a young criminal; about half of all indictable crimes are committed by people under twenty-one. Or you can be one of the rising number of cases of veneral disease; Dr. Leslie Weatherhead recently told the Public Morality Council (wow!) in London that he thought your sexual behaviour was “verging on a national disaster.”

Yes, you’re with it. Nobody’s ever been like you before and nobody’s ever going to be brilliant enough to be like you in the future.

But what else did that old square Weatherhead say about you ?

  I am sure that if there was another war they would give their lives for their country just as readily as my own generation has done.

And do you know he’s probably right, except that you haven’t got a country to give your life for.

Let’s have a look at you, youngster. There are plenty of mealy-mouthed sociologists, religicos, politicians, newspapermen, who try to kid us that you’re socially significant. They make long, dull speeches and they write long, dull articles trying to prove that you are in revolt.

They say that you break and enter because you’re dissatisfied with society. You catch a dose because you are bewildered by the pace, the pressures and the priorities of modern capitalism.

Well you’re not the first person to get het up about such things. Your mum and dad were het up, just after the last war. They thought everything would be alright if they voted Labour. Your grandparents were het up after 1918. They went on hunger marches, maybe they even signed the Peace Pledge. They thought they were going places, while the squares of those days held their hands up in horror.

But when the crunch came they were no better than the rest. In capitalism’s hour of need they were not found wanting. They joined up and gave their young, frustrated, bewildered lives—or helped to kill equally confused and hapless people on the other side.

And while this was going on the people who are really het up—the people who have understood the problems of society and have thought their way to an answer —were quietly and steadfastly making their stand.

They have seen many het ups like you come and go, these people, and they arc not impressed by them; they know that they all end up the same way. They even regard some of the het ups—again like you—as one of the problems to get het up about.

Think about that, the next time you go on a rave. It’s with it to be young but if you don’t do something soon none of us may be with anything any more.


The exiles' return

It is difficult to decide how best to describe it.

Expediency? Resilience? Forgetfulness, perhaps? Whatever it is, no politician who aspires to the heights should be without it. .

We all remember the late Aneurin Bevan, who spent a lot of time upsetting his colleagues on the Labour Front Bench but who could always reconcile himself to eventually uniting with those same colleagues. Before he died, Bevan had managed to forget that Hugh Gaitskell was a “desiccated calculating machine” and was Gaitskell’s most loyal and useful deputy.

Consider now the cases of Mr. Ian Macleod and Mr. Enoch Powell. Both of these men have recently returned to the Conservative Front Bench, and both have an interesting history.

Mr. Macleod once seemed to be Macmillan’s favourite son; it was even whispered that he was sure to take over the Tory Party when Supermac finally gave up. But Macleod got the hot seat of Colonial Affairs, which cost him a lot of favour among the Settler lobby (Lord Salisbury called him “too clever by half"). So it came about that when Macmillian resigned, although Macleod fancied his chances, he was never really in the running for the leadership.

Macleod showed his pique—or whatever it was—by refusing to serve under Douglas-Home and by taking himself off to the editorship of The Spectator, from which vantage point he bombarded his party with a sensational article which attacked the “magic circle" who selected Sir Alec as Prime Minister.

Now for Mr. Powell. He is one of the knobbliest of politicians, one who must be getting to know the way back from the self-imposed wilderness. He resigned from the Conservative government at the same time as Thorneycroft threw in the Chancellorship (Mr. Macmillan’s “little local difficulty”), came back at the Ministry of Health in the big reshuffle in July 1962 (although the policies he had resigned over were still operative) and finally refused to continue in the government when Douglas-Home became Premier. For this last refusal, characteristically, Mr. Powell gave no reason.

Since then, Powell has got into the headlines with some dourly reactionary speeches which have been too much even for Mr. Quintin Hogg, who called him “a sort of Mao Tse-tung of Toryism.” (Soon after that Mr. Powell likened Harold Wilson to Louis XIV, which proved that beneath that grim exterior there lurks something like a sense of humour.)

It is evident that both Macleod and Powell have been able to forget, or suppress, or what you will, the memory of those days they spent on the outside looking in. They could not bring themselves to work under Sir Alec when he was Prime Minister but it is apparently a different matter now that he is only Leader of the Opposition.

But there has been no political change to justify this reversal. So what else could have changed? Could it be the men themselves? Or could it be that the Conservative defeat has thrown the leadership struggle wide open once more?

Both Macleod and Powell have posed as men of inflexible principle. We are accustomed now to high flown speeches and dramatic political gestures. Underneath them, a politician is a politician for all that.


ABROAD

Kruschchev goes

What with the fall of Mr. Kruschchev, and the return of President Johnson to the White House, the last few weeks have been a busy time for the political seers.

These gentlemen have all been hard at work, speculating on what the Brezhnev/Kosygin dictatorship will mean for the future of the Soviet Union. They have all been analysing the portents for the United States, now that the votes there have so decisively confirmed the Democratic Party—or at any rate that part of it which sticks to the Johnson line—in power.

This all makes interesting reading on a winter Sunday afternoon but apart from that is worth very little. Government policies, in all countries, are largely mapped out for them by the conditions of capitalism at large. Sometimes these conditions force a new government to go directly against their election programmes, as they forced the Roosevelt administration in 1932. The New Deal, far from being a policy which the American electorate enthusiastically voted for in advance, was hammered out after the election—the Roosevelt platform had been one of balancing the Budget as opposed to the deficit financing which his administration eventually imposed.

But whichever party comes to power runs capitalism in roughly the same way. This is not to say that different governments do not bring any changes at all; only that whatever changes they may bring are quite insignificant. A Goldwater administration would probably have cut back the Democratic plans for limited spending on what are called social services. The new Russian government may launch a cautious peace offensive against China.

None of these changes affects the basis of society, and it is this basis which lays down the policies of governments. Johnson will have to live with, and may find his plans upset by, the international disputes of capitalism. Over these disputes hangs the massive threat of a nuclear clash. Brezhnev and Kosygin have the same problems, and they approach them in the same way as the American ruling class; one of their early appearances was at the parade in the Red Square, taking the salute as the tanks and the missiles and other horror machines trundled past.

What are the limited significances of the new governments? Johnson will probably run the affairs of American capitalism in a strictly down-to-earth manner. No risky adventures for him, no posturing on the Brink, no pandering to outraged patriotic neuroses. But if ever the situation demands that the Button be pushed, Johnson's finger will not falter.

The manner of Mr. Kruschchev's going indicates that something has happened in the Soviet Union over the past twelve years. In Stalin’s time, nobody was eased out of power on the excuse that they were ill; to lose favour was to face the execution squad. The fact that the big influence in Russia now seems to be shared by two men may mean that the present is a short interregnum from which another, undisputed dictator may emerge, much as Kruschchev himself did.

But none of these speculations, or changes, are worth bothering about. Whatever the political complexion of a government, and whatever promises it may have had to make to get power, it is largely helpless when gripped by the events of capitalism. The lives of the working class—the ordinary people—in Russia and the United States will be essentially unaffected by changes at the top.

Which means that the skilfully organised vote in the Kremlin, and all those hands which Johnson shook, did not mean a thing.

POLITICS 

Committee of 100

Stand by for another amazing performance by those ever-ready masters of double-think, double-speak, double-act—the Committee of 100.

For those of you who have just come in, the Committee of 100 were, not so long ago, the reckless dare-devils whose tactics of direct action were going to force the government to renounce nuclear weapons. They packed Trafalgar Square. They sat down in Whitehall. They were arrested by the score, the aged Earl Russell among them.

They had all manner of offshoots, like the Spies for Peace, who thought that they were helping to get rid of the Bomb by revealing the whereabouts of the emergency government centres.

They got up to all sorts of gimmicks, like planting Trees of Peace inside the wire of the bomber bases and holding an auction outside to sell off the aircraft.

They were a lively bunch.

But while this was going on the British government were turning out their Bomb and so were the Americans and the Russians and the French and the Chinese and goodness knows who else.

Then a funny thing happened. Or rather, several funny things.

First of all the Committee of 100 started to organise a lot of demonstrations about things which have nothing to do with the Bomb. Things like housing. Like industrial relations. The Greek government. (Some of them were framed by Detective Sergeant Challenor.) Racial disputes.

Then Earl Russell made it quite clear that the days of his demanding total, unilateral renunciation of the Bomb were over. He was, he said, now prepared to welcome “partial measures . . . as, for example, the lessening of military budgets . . .”

Did this cause second thoughts in the Committee? At any rate, some of its prominent members decided that its activities were becoming too remote from its original object, and they threatened to resign unless the Committee got back to the simpler proposition of Ban the Bomb.

But the Committee of 100 are still at it. Their latest idea, according to The Guardian, of 29th October, is a “ . . . series of study groups in an attempt to bring together Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Arabs and Israelis and to discover the facts behind the tensions in South Africa.”

The only sensible reaction to this is to wonder what sort of a dreamworld the Committee of 100 are living in.

Greeks and Turks are not lighting each other in Cyprus because nobody has thought of running a study group to bring them together. The same is true of the Arabs and Israelis. And, after the millions of words which have been written on the racial problem in South Africa, it is amazing that the Committee should think that their puny study group can add anything of any value.

These problems, just like the others which the Committee of 100 dabbled in in the past, are bound up with the tensions and disputes of property society. The Bomb itself springs from those very disputes. There is only one way to abolish them, altogether and at once.

That is to end capitalism and replace it with Socialism.

And what does the Committee of 100 do towards that? Exactly nothing. In fact, with their contradictory propaganda and their inconsistent activities they only add their weight to the many other organisations which confuse the working class. In that is their indictment.

The Committee of 100 obstruct society’s progress towards the world of freedom and brotherhood. When they finally go out of their confused and hapless existence there should be not a glimmer of regret.

BUSINESS

Fifteen per cent

Ask the Man In The Street to tell you how the price of a commodity is fixed and he will probably reply that the manufacturer finds out its cost of production, adds on a bit for his profit and that’s that.

There is no need to be an economics don to suspect that there is something wrong with that theory. What fixes the cost of production itself? Are there no limits to the amount added on for profit? What happens to the price if another manufacturer undercuts ?

These questions were all given an airing when the government imposed the fifteen per cent import levy. The popular notion is that an increase in duty inevitably means an increase in price—and, presumably, that a decrease in duty means a decrease in price.

Even before the latest surcharge, there was abundant evidence to refute that notion. For example, some years ago certain types of steel were allowed into this country duty free, because there was a severe shortage of the stuff. But as the British steel industry's productive capacity caught up with its orders the government came under pressure to abolish the duty concession.

This they eventually did. Now what happened to the price of imported steel? Such was the competition between the steel companies that the Dutch state steel works at Ijmuiden actually reduced their price to take account of the duty, so that British car makers could continue to buy Dutch steel at the same price as from the Steel Company of Wales.

This does not always happen. If their market allows them to, some manufacturers may pass on an increase in duty or tax. Others may actually be able to put up their prices by more than the extra duty. Others may have to absorb the extra, wholly or partly, themselves.

Here are a few of the different reactions to the new fifteen per cent surcharge.

Harvey’s put their port and sherry up by 6d. a bottle. Canon (Geneva) absorbed the entire surcharge on their best-selling Canonet camera. In motor cars, the reactions were various: Saab (Sweden) raised their prices by anything up to £66. Renault (France) put up their prices, but on average over all their models by only 1.55 per cent, much less than the extra duty. Mercedes (Germany) increased the prices of all their models except their smaller 220, which is unchanged. Volvo (Sweden) bore most of the levy themselves, raising their prices by less than one third of the fifteen per cent.

We do not have to look far for the reason for these varied reactions. Renault’s increases were about the same as those recently imposed by the British car makers. Mercedes held the price of the 220 because it is a comparatively new model, in a range which they do not want to price themselves out of.

In other words, the foreign car firms considered the surcharge with both eyes on their competitive prospects in the British market. The board rooms of Ford and B.M.C. must be under no delusion that they can now luxuriate behind a comfortable tariff wall. They know they have to take account of the market forces of capitalism at large and its pressures on the fluctuations in prices.

100 days that will not shake the world (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dear old ladies of Cheltenham can come out from hiding in the cupboard and the grizzle-headed sons of toil can stop throwing their cloth caps into the air. There will be no revolution, as of yet.

The Labour Government, now about six weeks old, won the Election on a programme called The New Britain. Somewhere buried in the pages of that manifesto the word Socialist makes just two hasty, shamefaced appearances. Nowhere was the programme indiscreet enough to attempt a definition of Socialism. But in Cheltenham and Bermondsey this is a mere detail; the very mention of the word is enough to frighten some, and to enrapture others, in reality, nobody had any reason for getting excited about the new government, and Mr. Wilson's men soon got down to the job of convincing them of this.

During the Election, the Labour leader asked that his administration be granted a First Hundred Days, as new American governments are, to settle into the saddle and take up the reins of government. This idea caught on. The Guardian, which lately has leaned over backwards not to be beastly to the Labour Party, is co-operating by publishing a little diary of the period, recording events like: “To meet expected £800 million deficit Government announced 15 per cent levy on all imports except. . . . and “Letter to Prime Minister from Institution of Professional Civil Servants complaining. . . .” This was a rather cosy idea but perhaps Mr. Wilson had little time for such indulgences. He was busy.

The new Prime Minister immediately showed that he meant business. On his first Sunday in office he went along to Ten Downing Street dressed in a nondescript sports jacket and baggy trousers. The press loved this but the tailoring world took a rather different point of view. They were obviously afraid that the Wilson look might catch on, leaving a lot of suavely fashioned jackets and elegantly tapered trousers on their hands. Yet Wilson's rumpled appearance that Sunday was probably due to anything but absent mindedness. He has always promoted the image of himself as the ex-grammar schoolboy—the placid, earnest middle-class fellow made good. Just the chap, in fact, who always wears comfortable sports clothes on a Sunday. That jacket and those trousers were politically comfortable. The new Premier was dressed as carefully as if he had been turned out in Saville Row.

From the energetic man in Number Ten came the lists of Labour's Ministers. Mr. Frank Cousins could forget about the days of strife when he went on Aldermaston marches and swung his union's massive vote in favour of the Labour Party going unilateralist. His new job gave him responsibility for this country's military nuclear research. There was a Minister of Defence, Mr. Healey, to work hard to make weapons and a Minister of Disarmament, Mr. Alun Gwynne-Jones, who is supposed to get rid of them. There were all the usual appointments of men to look after the economic, commercial and financial affairs of British capitalism. The list got longer and longer—far more than Sir Alec had had—which showed that Mr. Wilson meant to play his part in producing more, even if it was only jobs for politicians.

Yet there were still doubts and fears. The Wilson Government was said, by people who pretend to understand such terms, to be too “left wing.'' There was the Prime Minister himself. There was Frank Cousins. Dick Crossman. Barbara Castle. All of them dangerous revolutionaries. Perhaps there were capitalists who were thinking it would not be long now before they returned after a hard day on the grouse moors to find that their servants had taken over the stately homes. The New Britain had promised that the Labour Government". . . will frame the broad strategy for increasing investment . . ." but what capitalist was going to want to invest when he might any day come home to find the under gardener with his feet up on the library table just finishing on the best brandy? Clearly, something had to be done to reassure them.

It was Mr. Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, who spoke first. His subject was the dockers, and he was not diverted from saying his piece by the fact that he could easily be mistaken for a dockworker himself. Mr. Gunter is one of Labour's tough guys and likes to think himself as a blunt speaker. There was, of course, no need for him to be blunt about the dockers taking anything over; nothing was further from their intentions. They were only after another twenty-five shillings in their weekly pay packets, and some of them were sufficiently-keen on this to think the negotiators on both sides might be persuaded to hurry things along a bit if they (the dockers) went on unofficial strike.

Now to Mr. Gunter, on what he called the bed of nails at the Ministry of Labour, there is nothing worse that an unofficial strike. Such a strike might even upset the trade of British capitalism, or indirectly cut the profits of some exporting capitalists. So he spoke out. The dockers' threatened walk-out, he said, could ". . . only lead to anarchy, I strongly condemn such action.''

This was heartening stuff to the employers, who in their sillier moments might have imagined that a Labour Government stood for improved wages. The National Association of British Manufacturers promptly sent Mr. Gunter a telegram which “warmly welcomed” his intervention and offered him “any assistance'' they could give.

Mr. Douglas Jay was another member of the new government who seemed rather nervous about the effect of Labour's undeserved reputation for revolutionary hellfire. Mr. Jay is now President of the Board of Trade and he is obviously anxious to do all he can to maintain the economic interests of Britain's ruling class so that they still have some Trade for him to be President of the Board of. It did not take him long to arrange a visit to his counterparts in Red China, in the hope of drumming up some export orders. But before he went Mr. Jay made it quite clear, in case anyone should get the wrong idea while he was away, that the British capitalist class has absolutely nothing to fear from a Labour Government:

  The new Government (he said) starts with no prejudice or bias whatever against private business and industry. . . . Profits, provided they are earned by efficiency and technical progress, and not by restrictive practices or abuse of monopoly, are the sign of a healthy economy.

The response to this was immediate: “Mr. Jay cheers the stock markets” (The Guardian); “Jay's Assurances Help Equity Shares" (Daily Telegraph); “There was hardly anything Mr. Jay said . . . to which an enlightened industrialist or merchant banker would have hesitated to put his name.” (Samuel Brittan, then Economic Editor of The Observer).

Directly after this Mr. Wilson reappeared on television to tell us some more about his government's plans to boost the trade of British capitalism. Mr. Wilson was grave and purposeful, and had clearly been having some attention from the make-up men. He attacked wildcat strikes and restrictive practices. His government had that very day announced the fifteen per cent surcharge on imports, but that was a restrictive practice which escaped Mr. Wilson’s condemnation.

The effect of this surcharge is to alter the Customs regulations so that, for example, “wood sawn lengthwise, sliced or peeled . . . of a thickness exceeding five millimetres" is allowed into the country at the old rate of duty, while ". . . wood planed, tongued, grooved, rebated, chamfered, V-jointed, centre V-jointed, beaded, centre beaded . . ." must bear the new levy. In the same way, “Clothing, clothing accessories . . . showing signs of appreciable wear. . . ." escape the surcharge, while clothing which does not show signs of “ appreciable wear ” cost its importers another fifteen per cent duty.

It was apparently part of Labour's contribution to productivity to set a vast array of customs officers, shipping clerks and the like to work calculating and paying this extra duty. Perhaps somebody was grateful for this; at the same time as they imposed the new levy, the government gave a hand-out in the shape of a tax rebate to firms which are in the export trade. This rebate, also, will take a lot of working out, checking and cross-checking — work which will add precisely nothing to production. But the emergency measures were welcomed in the places where they know a bull market when they see one. Applauded The Guardian: “The response in financial markets to the Government's first economic measures was uniformly favourable." And Lord Inchcape, leading a delegation of Middle East exporters to the Board of Trade, was moved to say, “We welcome the Government’s proposed tax rebate scheme."

It was thus obvious that the Labour Government were doing all in their power to reassure the British ruling class that their interests were as secure as ever. And the ruling class showed their appreciation for this considerate attitude in the usual way. The Stock Exchange, where all men are far more equal than the others outside, and which is a sensitive (some say over-sensitive) barometer of its members’ prospects, responded. No shareholders sold out and fled to South America. No directors committed suicide. They just went on doing business in the normal manner:

October 19th.  

Gunter’s attack on the dockers. 

Stock Exchange "nervous . . . prices tumbling in most sections ” (The Guardian) Steels and insurances fell sharply. Financial Times Index (FTI) 9.5 points down at 350. 

October 20th. 

Mr. Jay’s statement on private industry and profits. 

Recovery in gilts, steels firm. FTI 1.7 points up to 351.7. 

October 21st. 

Further advance in gilts. Equities ". . . staging a strong rally ’’ (Daily Telegraph). FTI 6.6 points up to 357.8. 

October 22nd. 

Dockers decide on official strike for December 1st. 

October 26th. 

Emergency measures announced.
New account on Stock Exchange opened confidently.
Gilts, electrical and engineering shares up. FTI rose 3 points to 359.6 

October 27th. 

Gilts up again. Engineering and motor shares up. Allied Ironfounders—one of the companies which have donated to Conservative Party funds—gained 1 /10½d. on the day FTI climbed to 362.8—a rise of 3.2 points. 

October 28th. 

Recovery on Stock Exchange halted, as speculators sold to realise their profits. Good day for gilts. Bovis (with Sir Keith Joseph back on the board) gained l/6d. on the day. FTI dropped 3.5 points to 359.3  

October 29th. 

Business slacker. Channel Tunnel shares one of the few to rise. FTI fell 2.8 points to 356.5

The Stock Exchange will continue to fluctuate, under various influences, throughout the life of the Labour Government. One thing it will not do is to go out of existence. It is an important part of capitalism’s financial mechanism and the Labour Party has no intention of abolishing capitalism. Fundamental social change is not to be the ally, nor even the nodding acquaintance, of the Wilson Ministry. They have no mandate for such change and indeed have never asked for one. To have campaigned on a programme of social revolution would have been to administer the Kiss of Death to themselves, and Mr. Wilson is a man who fights hard to stay politically alive. So he stood, in the Words of The New Britain, to " .. . make government itself more efficient. . . . rekindle an authentic patriotic faith . . . " This vague nonsense won many more votes than Socialism, which after all is only a clearly defined solution to the hardships and contradictions of the modern world.

By their records shall we know them. The first Labour Government was famous for the personal vanity of its Ministers, for its reliance upon Liberal support and for its bungling of a prosecution. The second went down in history as the government which presided over the doubling of the unemployed, which split over the proposal to cut the dole and which finally, in part, sold out to the Tories.

The third lasted longer. They will forever be connected with the austerity of post-war England, with the wage-freeze, devaluation and the dollar gap. And they will be remembered as the government which eventually disintegrated, personally and politically, as so many of its members were killed or incapacitated by the strains of trying to control the waywardness of British capitalism.

What shall we remember the Wilson Government for? Will it, also, be swept from power by an economic tornado? Will it have to fight the unions, to impose a programme of rigid austerity? Such is the unpredictable anarchy of capitalism that the government, for all its erudite advisers, cannot know the answers to these questions.

Mr. Wilson is said to want to be remembered as the head of one of the great reforming Ministries of British history. We have been warned. There will be a spate of Bills dealing with all manner of minor anomalies. Sometimes they will be measures designed to undo the work of previous reforms. Some of them may be a little useful to working class. Most of them will be the usual shifts and compromises, the weary rearrangements of the pressures of poverty exploitation and the degrading of human beings. And when Mr. Wilson has finished capitalism will still be there, waiting for the next lot of manipulators to arrive.

There will be no revolution, as of yet. But how long the “of yet" lasts depends on the knowledge and the wishes of the people who send the manipulators back to Westminster. And that, Mr. and Mrs. Average Voter—in Cheltenham, in Bloomsbury—means you.

Ivan

Our Bromley Candidate's Message (1964)

Party News from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The Bromley "Advertiser” invited our candidate, E. Grant, in the Parliamentary Election to state his position. We print below his statement which appeared in the issue of October 8th.

“My message in unorthodox. I am not a leader. I make no promises. I do not ask for your vote. Our election statement does not feature my photograph, neither does it say what a wonderful fellow I am.

The membership of the Socialist Party of Great Britain decided that, in line with our democratic approach to politics and desire to disseminate the Socialist idea, we would use our limited funds to make a token stand in two constituencies. Bromley and Glasgow Woodside.

Here the real alternatives are made clear: either the continuance of capitalism, with all the miseries and indignities that flow from it, or the establishment of of world-wide social equality based upon the common ownership of the means of living. We seek a mandate for Socialism. Nothing less will do.

Faced with a world in which two-thirds of mankind is starving, a class-divided world wracked with war and haunted by insecurity, the Socialist is one who realises that to solve such problems our capitalist way of life which gives rise to them must be replaced by a new social structure. It is both necessary and practical for the working nine-tenths of humanity to organise, consciously and democratically, to dispossess the owning one-tenth, and to place in the hands of the community the means of providing comfort and plenty for all.

Socialism involves far more even than the provision of abundance, of which we would take freely according to our needs. When work ceases to be employment, it will not remain the meaningless drudgery it is when we are forced to do it for a wage or salary. When the world’s resources are held in common and things are made not for profit but solely for use, work will take on a meaning it cannot have today.

Craftsmanship will flourish and the gap between the creative artist and the automata of the offices and the workshops seeking escape into mass-produced leisure pursuits and hooliganism will be closed. We ourselves shall decide where we work, how long, and at what tempo.

Technology, now so largely devoted to developing means of destruction, will be diverted towards eliminating undesirable toil. All races will live together in harmony. We shall become integrated, creative human beings.

It is a mistake to believe that the Labour Party, with its petty national mentality and its list of palliatives, contributes towards Socialism. Like the Conservatives and Liberals, they aspire to administer capitalism and, in power, do all the terrible things this task involves. The “socialism” of the Labour Party, like that of the Communists, is a myth.

A word about I.N.D.E.C. They protest against one of the greatest dangers we face and imagine it possible to isolate the nuclear problem from all the others and solve it within the capitalist framework. The truth is that war itself dictates the weapons, and capitalism is war-prone. The urgent task before us, therefore, is its abolition.

I urge the electors to consider this revolutionary proposition, and to act upon it.”

Eddie Grant

The Passing Show: Merry Christmas You Suckers (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Merry Christmas You Suckers

— “A merry Christmas you suckers . . .” (Paddy Roberts).

This is the month when everyone is caught in a deluge of hypocrisy. It is the time of the year when the consumer goods market is stuffed with a horrifying mass of gadgets and gifts of all kinds, when traders are anxiously stocking their shelves in the hope of a sales recovery after the autumn slack, and when workers are getting their Christmas lists ready for the annual "exchange" of presents.

We mentioned hypocrisy. The G.P.O. takes on extra staff to cope with the mountain of mail which will appear in the fortnight or so before the 25th—a large portion of it greetings cards. Many of these cards will be sent to people whom, if you are honest with yourselves, you care little or nothing about; but such is the pressure of Yuletide tradition, that you convince yourselves to the contrary and then forget all about it for another twelve months.

Whatever one may feel about the religious origin of Christmas—and it’s worth hardly a shrug of the shoulders—we should perhaps examine the “peace and goodwill” message and ask ourselves whether it measures up to the world we know. First of all, is there peace in the world ? Maybe the various politicians would call it that, just because at this moment there is no major conflict going on. It could more truthfully be described as an uneasy lull while each side builds ever more terrible weapons, waiting for the day when they will be used. The conflicts leading to war are as strong as ever, and while they exist peace can never be a reality.

Then again, is there really goodwill to all men? Smethwick is a timely reminder of the conditions which make an empty mockery of the very sentiment. For the prejudices of Smethwick on October 15th are basically those of every non-Socialist the world over, on every day of the year. Prejudice between people takes many forms, racialism being only one of them, and will be with us in one shape or another as long as capitalism lasts. This is the system which throws us against each other in competition and provides the breeding ground for the petty snobberies, undignified squabbles, the race to keep up with the Joneses, the bitterness and often the outbreaks of naked violence.

No doubt many of you this season will eat and drink a bit too much, and tell your workmates what great guys they are. You will buy drinks all round on December 24th, and spew half of it up on the way home. You will listen to the maudlin platitudes of the Queen's speech the next afternoon, and tell yourselves it's not such a bad world after all. But in the bleary aftermath, the ugly truth will still be there. It will still be a capitalist world. You will still be members of the working class and the problems of twelve months ago will still face you in all their urgency.


The same old story

The past year or two have seen a lot of talk about a national wages policy. All the main political parties had this in their recent election programmes, suitably hedged round with meaningless adjectives such as “just,” “realistic,” “planned” etc . . . . But stripped of the verbiage, what does it mean in practice? Simply that workers’ demands for higher wages will be resisted, as always. True, the politicians will talk about “national interest” and the need to make ‘‘our” goods more competitive on the world market, and “sharing the burden more fairly.” They will try to convince us that increased production and static wage rates will mean a higher standard of living for all.

Do they themselves really believe what they are so persistent in telling us? If they do, you'd think they would be the first to cut their own incomes to the bone, but a glance at the salaries of some of the new Labour government ministers will quickly give the lie to this. And the rank-and-file M.P.s will probably be quick to vote themselves a rise of several hundred pounds a year if the opportunity presents itself.

But if you think that this is a peculiarity of English politics, you'd better take a good look elsewhere. All over the capitalist world, pressure for wage increases meets with the same bitter opposition as here. Some really hefty strikes have been fought out in such countries as Germany, France and U.S.A. over the past few years, to the usual claptrap talked by those in power. New Zealand, that example of state-subsidised paradise so beloved of the left, has certainly not gone unscathed in the field of labour disputes, and currently is suffering an economic crisis similar to Britain's. Prime Minister Holyoake has called for ‘‘common sense, restraint, and adjustment” (Guardian Oct. 24th) to meet the situation, although only a few days previously, M.P.s had awarded themselves a 39 per cent salary increase.

Over the water in Australia too. Parliamentarians have been setting a grand example in abstemious living. Says The Guardian of Oct. 29th :

  The salaries of Members in both Houses are increased from £A2,750 to £A3,500, plus an additional £A250 on their constituency allowances which may vary between £A800 and £A1,050 a year. . . . All Ministers, Parliamentary officers, and Leaders of Opposition in both Houses receive higher salaries and allowances. The Prime Minister . . .  receives additional salary and allowances bringing them to a total of £A17,100.

Labour opposition leader Calwell supported the increases. He did not think it could be said “that members had been avaricious or greedy.” Of course not. They have just forgotten the dire warnings which they themselves have uttered about the disastrous consequences of higher wages. But then, they don’t believe what we’re told, and neither should we.


A touch of Smethwick

Despite the politicians' protests, the racial issue poked its ugly nose into the recent election campaign and two Labour candidates were toppled by it — Fenner Brockway at Slough and Patrick Gordon-Walker at Smethwick. Even by the accepted standards of capitalist politics, the new Tory M.P. for Smethwick, Alderman Griffiths, was said to have fought a dirty campaign; he accepted the help of avowedly fascist workers like Mrs. Crow, and lost no opportunity of appealing to working class ignorance and prejudice along racialist and nationalist lines. His meetings were noted for the deliberate way in which he played upon the baser emotions and feelings of his audiences. In this way it was fatally easy for Gordon-Walker, whose popularity anyway had been falling in the area with each election, to be out manoeuvred and lose the fight. His party now supports immigration control, but apparently he was unable to square this with his opponent's taunt that Labour voted against it when Gaitskell was their leader.

To all accounts, Gordon-Walker fought a “gentlemanly” campaign, but what about his own feelings on the racial question? During the election he hotly denied that his daughter was marrying a “black” or that he owned a house in Smethwick and let it out to coloured people. Perhaps at the back of it all he is not so full of brotherly love for those of darker skins as many people may have thought. Nor should we forget the record of the Labour Party when last in power.

Then, Gordon-Walker was their Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. In 1950, he had no hesitation in exiling the Bamangwato Tribe’s elected leader Seretse Khama, from Bechuanaland, when he had the temerity to marry a white woman, Ruth Williams. There was strong suspicion that he had been influenced by the South African government’s hysterical opposition to mixed marriages: nevertheless, he maintained a gentlemanly but stubborn refusal to publish the report of the official enquiry into the affair.

However, times change somewhat, and with the emergence of more African independent states, the astute capitalist politician realises that overt racialism can be a very hot potato indeed. Even Alderman Griffiths has toned down his remarks since the election, as was obvious from his maiden speech, which played down the issue. Anyway, there will be an increasing “coloured” vote in Britain over the next few years, and Griffiths will probably not be the only one trying to forget the things he said in 1964.

Allowing for all this, however, colour prejudice is likely to be with us for some time to come. Why do we say this? Because in their ignorance of the real cause of their problems, workers will always seek a scapegoat. No legal enactment can deal with that. At the turn of the century it was the Jews of London’s East End who were blamed for overcrowding and squalor, among other things. Then it was the turn of the Irish. As these minorities have become assimilated, antagonism towards them has lessened, although by no means disappeared. With the Negro or Indian worker it is a different story. Their dark skin will pick them out in a crowd and provide a ready focus for the outbreaks of frustration and violence which are so much a feature of private property society.

Yes, workers everywhere have a lot to learn. They have yet to grasp the idea that what really matters is their class status, not the colour of their skins. It is a depressing picture —but not a hopeless one.

Eddie Critchfield

In Youth is Pleasure (1964)

A Short Story from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was on Empire Day, I remember, that I realised Miss Davies' face reminded me of a loganberry.

It was not so much that it was the colour and the shape of a loganberry, nor that it was creased and segmented into countless purple drupes. As I looked up at her that day, I noticed that her long chin was covered in fine silver down which gave it the same musty look as the loganberries which my father grew on the allotment which helped to eke out our frugal budget.

That was a long time ago, in the year when Miss Davies was my class mistress at the cheerless council school which seemed to be built entirely of dark green tiles and chocolate-stained wood, and where the smell of old books and varnish was almost as intimidatory as the cane. Miss Davies was a faded spinster, who clung with a patient obstinacy to the symbols of her sobriety—to her long, plain clothes and her mirror-shined, sensible shoes. Almost certainly she is now dead and I have no wish to be unkind to her memory, for of the race of teachers which inhabited that school she was one of the gentler and more sensitive.

Some of those teachers were little short of vicious in the physical and psychological extremes to which they subjected their pupils. One of them often punched us in the back or the chest. And more than once I sat in hot misery as another of them mocked one of the children for his ragged clothes or his broken shoes.

We never hit back. That school was not in what they called a Depressed Area, but many of our fathers were chronically unemployed. Perhaps some of our parents' docile apathy had seeped into us. Miss Davies seemed to sense our plight—she was careful not to notice a pair of patched trousers and I am sure she felt for us when on Monday morning it was time to pay for the third of a pint of milk we drank each day. Children whose fathers were unemployed got the milk for nothing, and some of us endured tortures of embarrassment as we stayed in our seats while the others lined up with their money.

I for one appreciated her kindness. But children are children. It was a loganberry Miss Davies reminded me of, as she smiled down that Empire Day at the Union Jack which lay on my desk. She must have realised that it was a pitifully cheap thing, but she also probably divined what it had meant to buy it.

It was the custom at that school to hold a parade in the playground each Empire Day, and for this we were encouraged to bring a flag. The local shops saw their opportunity; I had bought mine for a halfpenny at the local cut price drapers. It was made of the shoddiest cloth, roughly coloured, stiffened with dressing and tacked onto a short stick.

I had wrung that halfpenny from my mother, who was then absorbed by the conjuring trick of feeding and clothing several children on a dole of seventeen and sixpence a week. It could not have been easy for her to part with the money. Perhaps she gave it to me so that I should not feel out of things at school. But I fear there may have been other reasons. For although she often did not know where the next meal was coming from, my mother had unbounded pride in the British Empire.

So I got the Union Jack, and I carried it proudly to school, and I took it with me when we spilled out into the black asphalt playground for the morning break. But mine was not the only flag. There were bigger and better ones, and one boy in particular had what seemed an enormous Union Jack.

He began swishing it backwards and forwards in the air, until the other children became gripped by a strange frenzy and went roaring around the playground in a long line, hooting and waving, with the big flag at the front. Years later I recognised the hysteria which caused Simon to be beaten to death in Lord Of The Flies; at the time I only knew that I was uneasy at those frantic children. I pressed my shoulder against the rough brick wall and nervously gripped my cheap little flag.

When, later in the morning, the teachers marshalled us into the parade, some of them admired the big flag, so that the boy who carried it smiled and flushed with pleasure. I held mine tremblingly aloft, and they herded us into the assembly hall for the headmaster to rant at us on the virtues of patriotism and the glorious oppressions of the British Empire.

That headmaster was perfectly suited to the staff he controlled, outdoing them all in pomposity, sourness and cruelty. I am sure that the bitterness of his speech was intended to spoil our half holiday. I went home still clutching my Union Jack, properly browbeaten and reflecting upon what I had been told of the great profit gathering enterprise which had splashed so vast an area of pink across the map and which had, in truth, built so many vast fortunes on such an enormous burden of suppression.

There were other celebrations in that school. One of my earlier memories is of the party on the Silver Jubilee of George V. This happened to fall on my birthday and I can remember wondering why they were serving us lemonade and buns, and trying to convince myself that it was nothing to do with me.

Then there was the annual dirge of Armistice Day, when we were drawn up, just before eleven o'clock, in the gloomy hall to take another dose of our headmaster's hypocrisy. He had survived the Great War and was watching with sterile bitterness as Europe moved inexorably towards 1939. He had nothing of hope or of valour to offer us—only a grating curse upon us, upon Europe, upon the world and the human race.

The staff ushered us back to the classrooms, the chill November afternoon closed in and it was almost dark when we went home. If the woman next door had been generous, there might be some stale seed cake for tea.

It is easy for an adult to be over protective to children and to under-estimate their resilience. My gorge rises when I remember that school, what it imposed upon its pupils and the pernicious nonsense on which it fed us. How many of us survived, in the sense that we have not become race-maniacs, or religious neurotics, or apathetic zombies ?

The bitter fact is that when those teachers were so enthusiastically organising their cheap little parades of cowed children we were all—staff and pupils alike—suffering under capitalism at its oppressive worst. The male teachers were composed of some who had come through the Great War and those who were to be called up in 1939/45. The world was still spinning up and down in slump, when a politician could claim that the problem would be solved when the unemployment figures got down to one million.

The great crash, with its cuts in dole and in teachers' pay was still a recent memory. The staff clung desperately to the gossamer threads of their employment which kept them out of the Labour Exchange. They could afford to wear a suit every day, to take a holiday; the headmaster even ran a very small car. But theirs was an insecure, degraded existence. They too were caught up in something which they detested but did not understand. They had little to thank capitalism for.

The teachers could do nothing about some of the propaganda they put over. They had to give us our Scripture lessons; they had to dish out the official, fatuous version of history (even supposing that any of them were aware of any other). But it is harder to excuse them for the glee with which they organised the patriotic demonstrations. It is hard to excuse the teacher who regularly, before the class, saluted a portrait of the King and Queen. It is difficult to excuse the admiration of the boys' big Union Jack.

For why should an unemployed man, or his children, have saluted the flag? Why should a man who had come through the trenches, and lived to see the politicians promises exposed, be proud of his nationality? Did we not, in our penury, have everything in common with the families of the unemployed in America, or Germany, or France? Was there not something wrong with a social system which created places like that school, with its defenceless children and its warped, frightened, bullying teachers ?

These questions are unanswered now, and they were unanswered that Empire Day as I looked up at Miss Davies. There was deep suffering in the land but the king was on his throne, the pound was worth a pound and the Tories were in with a comfortable majority.

There was no foretelling, then, that the wounds inflicted inside and outside that school might take seed, and one day blossom into a consciousness that we can build a world where children are not oppressed, nor pilloried, nor misled but are allowed to be children while they learn to grow up into co-operative, creative human beings.

Ivan

Who's Against Monopoly? (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the pollsters organised a canvass of the electorate on the question “are you in favour of monopoly”? they would get an almost unanimous “no.” But it would mean no more than would a poll asking “are you in favour of right against wrong” or some such loaded question. Monopoly is defined to mean, an “exclusive trading right in a certain commodity or class of commerce or business.” All the political parties declare themselves to be against it. In the recent General Election the outgoing Conservative government claimed merit for what it had done against monopoly and what it was prepared to do “to stimulate the forces of competition which make for efficiency and bring down prices.” The Labour Party didn't think much of this and promised to tackle the problem “at its roots” and to get at “monopoly and semi-monopoly price fixing.” The Liberals, too, are on the side of competition against monopoly, or so they say.

Here we have our first mystery. If three big parties are all against monopoly and have been so since the beginning of the century how is it that there is any monopoly to be tackled? The explanation is to be found in the nature of the social system in which we live. All manufacturers, traders bankers, shipping lines, aircraft companies and so on are in business to make a profit by selling something. The most distressful situation for any one of these organisations is to find that it cannot sell its product because a competitor is in the market with a cheaper one. Faced with declining sales and the threat of bankruptcy the companies that are being driven out will consider banding together for self-protection against the successful rival. He for his part will be expanding rapidly and out of the ensuing struggle there will emerge a smaller number of larger firms, possibly a very small number on the way to establishing a near monopoly. In the years since the war mergers and take-overs have eliminated thousands of manufacturing and retailing businesses. The latest wave has washed away a lot of grocery wholesalers. In an article “Wholesalers Combine or go under” the Financial Times (13 November 1964) states that in the last decade the number of wholesalers in the grocery trade “has tumbled from some 1,200 to just over 700 today.” This has happened as a direct result of competition, first from multiple and chain stores which have their own wholesaling arrangements and were taking business away from the independent shopkeepers (and thus from the grocery wholesalers) and secondly from the increasing practise of manufacturers selling direct to retailers and by-passing the grocery wholesaler altogether.

Concentration of the control of wholesaling and retailing will go further but it has a long way to go to reach the condition of such industries as chemicals, man-made fibres and steel.

The development towards monopoly in any field always provokes complaint that as competition disappears prices will be pushed up, and the demand that the government should do something about it This is not just a problem of this century. For hundreds of years the ceaseless efforts have been going on of sellers to control the supply, and of the authorities to prevent prices being pushed up as a result. It was however accompanied by the formation of monopolies by the government itself as a means of raising revenue. At first this took the form of the government, in return for payment, allowing individuals to have the monopoly of supplying some article or other; later the government operated some services itself, likewise as a means of raising revenue, as in the Post Office. In our day the government raises vast sums through its control of the import production and distribution of alcohol and tobacco; first creating the restrictions behind which monopoly prices can be charged, then skimming off as customs and excise duties the bulk of the monopoly price paid by the consumer.

When private monopolies or semi-monopolies are operating it depends on the kind of product and the extent to which it is in common use, whether the outcry against the monopolies will produce action by the government, to break it up or otherwise nullify it. About the middle of the last century railways were the only quick means of Transporting raw materials and manufactures from manufacturing areas to markets and ports. They were increasingly able to charge monopoly prices. Against this the manufacturers and trades generally had a common interest—it was a situation which often develops, the capitalists generally being held to ransom by a particular section of capitalists. The government, under the initiative of Gladstone, at that time a Tory, got Parliament to pass an Act giving the government power to nationalise the railways. It was a threat to the Railway managements, either curb your rapacity or be taken over.

Similar causes explain the early nationalisation of Telegraphs and Telephones, the setting up of the various Port authorities, and later the nationalisation of electricity. (In a rather different category was coal nationalised and the taking over of the steel industry. Here it was rather a question of large-scale and integrated organisation being needed for modernisation, to save industries falling behind technically and unable to solve their problems themselves in reasonable time.)

The attitude of the general body of capitalists towards a private monopoly operating a service such as transport or telephones is direct and immediate. Likewise if the product is some material such as steel or chemicals entering largely into manufacture and building. Having to pay monopoly prices raises general costs of production and reduces the profits of the capitalists who have to buy from the monopolists.

The effect of monopoly is sometimes indirect but no less harmful to the general body of capitalists: that is if the monopoly is in some product such as food which enters largely into the workers’ cost of living. Higher prices of these articles induce workers to press for higher wages; to the detriment of profits if they succeed, to the detriment of their own standard of living if circumstances are against them.

Once it is realised what gives rise to monoplies and the way they help those who own them and injure others, it will be readily understood that there cannot under capitalism be a consistent and logical attitude towards monopoly. All that can be said of the great majority of people is that each group is against other people’s monopolies, and the sectional groups change their attitudes with changing circumstances. Karl Marx in a letter written in 1852 criticised a writer who had declared that the aristocracy are on the side of monopoly and the capitalists against it. Marx pointed out that in the eighteenth century the English aristocracy had been all for the freedom of trade, but in the nineteenth century they were defenders of the corn laws which filled their pockets, and opponents of the manufacturers who had become free traders and believers in the benefits of “competition.” The manufacturers wanted the abolition of the protective duties on imported corn because they saw in cheap food the certainty of low wages for their workers and consequently higher profits for themselves.

At the present time the manufacturers who buy steel are somewhat divided about re-nationalising the steel companies. On the one hand they don’t like being dependent on a private semi-monopoly and recognise that with reorganisation and concentration the costs of producing steel might be lowered, but they are not confident, in the light of experience, that nationalisation will serve the purpose.

Just for the record we can make it clear that the SPGB, alone among the political parties in this country, really is against monopoly. But for us it is not a problem of private profit-making or nationalisation, high prices or low prices, high wages or low wages because socialism will have no place for profit, or prices or wages—simply production solely for use.

Edgar Hardcastle

Soho Square (1964)

Party News from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Successful meetings are being held every Sunday evening at 2, Soho Square, London W.l. (Near Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.) The Bloomsbury Branch have arranged these meetings, their first in Central London for many years. Prior to, and during the war, regular meetings had been successfully held and the Branch have been searching for a suitable Central London venue with a view to re-commencing indoor propaganda. The hall at 2, Soho Square, is comfortable, warm and pleasant, and already the attendances have been very good.

As is usual with all SPGB meetings our visitors are invited to discuss, and ask questions. The hall is available from 7.30 and meetings commence at 8 p.m. promptly. For a forward list of meetings please refer to details under “ Meetings ” column in this issue. A small plan gives directions of the situation of the hall

"The Observer” and the SPGB (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is an extract from The Observer (Oct. 9) to which the Party wrote in protest at the reference to the SP.G.B.

Everywhere around Glasgow, the contrast in political styles is striking. On the Left, they speak with tongues of the old Clydeside fire, preaching a new society, teaching their audiences a total view of socialist justice and democracy. All have something of the Trotskyite poster in Woodside which snarls at the citizen “Don’t vote for the S.P.G.B. (Socialist Party of Great Britain) candidate unless you understand and want Socialism.”

We publish, without comment, the Observer’s reply:

The Observer, 29th October, 1964.
Dear Sir, 

I have now heard from Neal Ascherson, to whom I referred your letter of October 11. After helping us in covering the election campaign he returned to his post as our resident Correspondent in Germany; hence there was some delay in reaching him. He writes:

“I think I should apologise without reserve to the members of the S.P.G.B. for calling them Trotskyite, I was mixing them up in my hurried head with the Socialist Labour League, and there is no excuse for that. I still think that “snarl” expressed the shock of hostility experienced by a reader of the S.P.G.B.’s fiercely honest and uncompromising poster."

I’m very sorry we can’t clarify this point now in our correspondence columns —it would be rather out of date and there is room for so few of all the letters— but we will take care not to make any such mistake again. 

Yours faithfully,

(Signed) Charles Davey, 

Assistant Editor.

News From Mid Herts (1964)

Party News from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much activity has taken place during the last year in Welwyn Garden City, Stevenage and Hatfield. The Group reports that the number of members has increased over this period. Seventeen discussion meetings have been held, most of them being held at Welwyn Garden City Community Centre. Fortnightly outdoor meetings were held at Stevenage Town Centre.

Canvassing of the Socialist Standard in the three areas has been regularly carried out and sales have risen from 2½ to 10 dozen per month. The Standard is regularly available in the public libraries at Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City.

The above is a short report of the activities of this Group who would welcome sympathisers and members in the district to help carry on the good propaganda work they are doing. K. Knight is the secretary — full address under “Groups” in this issue.

Class War in Australian "paradise" (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politically, paradise, it seems, is all things to all men. Among one loosely affiliated group (Labour and Communist Party supporters), it means (A) rising wages, (the Arbitration Commission of Victoria, Australia granted a £1 per week increase in the basic wage a few months ago). (B) a large and increasing proportion of nationalised industries, (recently all state loans have been over subscribed) and (C) little or no unemployment, (lately there have been more vacant jobs than workers to fill them). Among another and opposing group (the ruling class), paradise means (D) an expanding economy and rising profits, (overseas investments into Victoria, and profits have never been higher) and (E) a stable government, (last June elections, the Conservative government was again returned after many years in power). Thus at the present moment of the history of this State there are all of the conditions for paradise.

Yet from the midst of all these idyllic conditions, there is to be heard over the air and read in the newspapers, (Age 16th September 1964) that there exists a condition of “War” in this State. No less a person than the Premier Mr. Bolte, (pronounced Bol-tee) declares it to be so.

Now let us look more attentively at this state of purposeful war, waged by human beings among themselves. Usually we find it to be prefixed by a descriptive term e.g. generalised, such as “ Colonial War,” “Civil” or “ World War”; or, more specifically, “Zulu War,” “Civil War of England,” or “ World War I.” In the case of which Bolte speaks we must read further down into the smaller newsprint to find out what he refers to. Here we discover it to be nothing less than “Class War." It should be noted that Bolte does not directly classify it as such, but the implication is unmistakeable. Yet this implied admission of the existence of class war from the mouth of the Conservative Premier surely sounds strange and awesome to the ears of postwar society. For years we have been told that class antagonism and therefore class wars just no longer exist. These, we have been informed, belonged to the bad old days.

Since Bolte sounds off so urgently on a topic of vital concern to us all we feel it our bounden duty to more closely enquire what is the form of this warfare that he finds so alarming? And by whom is it conducted ? The Age tells us;

  A 48 hr. strike by 120,000 State Government workers was a “declaration of war on the Government and the people” the Premier said last night.
  The Trades Hall Council disputes committee decided late yesterday that the strike would begin at midnight on Monday. It will cancel or severely restrict—trains, trams, some buses, electricity and gas services and the Port of Melbourne operations until midnight on Wednesday.
  Members of 39 unions in 30 Government instrumentalities and departments will be involved in the stoppage.

The Unions thereby were serving 6 days notice upon the Chief executive of Victoria. “The strike will be called off ONLY if the Premier agrees to see T.H.C. officials immediately to discuss longstanding claims by State Workers."

And these claims four in number are : (1) removal of differences in the rate of pay of workers doing the same job in different departments. (2) increased margins. (3) £4 per week industry loading. (4) an extra week of annual leave.

These threatened strikes and ultimatums are not a bolt (no pun on the Premier's name is here intended) from the blue. Immediately before and since the June elections of this year returned his Government to office, Bolte has faced several manifestations of this lately admitted class war. On May 29, Government workers held a 24-hour stoppage of work and on August 12th again a similar stoppage was intended but was deferred by a compromise. Indeed, this latest proposed 48-hour strike of Victorian State employees has again been deferred.

Two more items of interest for those who vaguely feel that perhaps nationalisation of industries is in some manner to their advantage and thereby worth striving for; And both items are provided by the Age Melbourne. In headlines (17th September, 1964), we are informed that “Army to do work of Dock strikers” . . . The Federal Government has decided to use servicemen to load troop transport H.M.A.S. Sydney if a strike of civilian crane drivers continues at Garden Island Dockyard in Sydney.

The crane drivers who belong to the Federated Engine Drivers and Firemans Association declared the Sydney “black " following the dismissal of a union delegate.

So the Army, itself a nationalised institution, under the sole and direct control of the Federal Government, is always ready to act as strike breakers.

The second news 25th September, 1964. Nearly 20,000 railway workers throughout Queensland began a 24-hour work stoppage at midnight last night.

This stoppage stems from demands for restoration of service leave, payment of £4 per week industry allowance, and wage increases.

Yet the Labour and Communist Party trade union leaders and politicians, actual and would-be, still ask us to believe that immediate and future ailments such as poverty can be remedied by more and more nationalisation of industry.

What can we expect for the future ? The answer is simple. Within the prevailing class divided society there can be no paradise, only a parasite/host mode of existence for capitalist and working class respectively.

Peter Furey

Labour's not so new Britain (1964)

Book Review from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The New Britain: Labour's Plan Outlined by Harold Wilson. Selected Speeches 1964 (Penguin Special, 3/6d. )

Shortage of all the good things of life is nothing new to a worker, circumscribed as his life is by the size of his wage packet. That’s something no politicians have been able to do anything about, but it certainly does not stop them from promising. In fact, there was certainly no shortage of promises during the recent general election.

Not that the capitalist parties necessarily wait until the election date is announced. The Labour Party had prepared its election programme months beforehand, and it was detailed in a series of speeches by Harold Wilson in the first four months of this year. Nine of these speeches have been reprinted in a Penguin Special: Wilson—Selected Speeches 1964 (3/6d), and after you have read them, there should not be much doubt in your mind whose influence was dominant in the Patty’s subsequent manifesto.

It would be as well to read both documents and then keep them safely preserved for future reference, because workers’ memories are notoriously short and now that Wilson is Prime Minister, we may expect the promise-breaking to start at any time. Let us take a look at some of the pledges in the Penguin Book. First of all (of course) the housing problem. Yes, it’s down for solving for the umpteenth time but what does Mr. Wilson mean by "solving?" Well, among other things there will be many more council houses built for letting—what a prospect; building land will be taken into public ownership and there will be no further rent de-control. Cheap (and nasty) houses for the workers! That is the measure of his “ solution."

Then there is education. A shrewd stroke this, because Mr. Wilson can point to the severe deficiencies of the present set up, the dreary Victorian buildings and oversized classes in which many working class children are forced to study and the fact that there are not nearly enough teachers to go round. Thirteen years of Tory rule can be blamed for this, thinks Wilson, forgetting that the Tories in their turn inherited the mess which six years of Labour Government had failed to clear up.

We are going to have full employment, too, under Labour. This apparently is going to be assured by expanding production and trade by at least four per cent per year. Exports will be stepped up and industry encouraged to produce many of the goods which are now imported. It will all be done by “ a national plan" — in an unplannable world. The little matter of the anarchy of the capitalist market is something which is cheerfully ignored, but we may be sure that this anarchy will be the excuse —phrased differently of course — which will be trotted out if a recession occurs and the unemployment figures rise.

Mr. Wilson is nothing if not a man of the people, the whole people. That is to say, there is something for everyone in this book. To the Commonwealth more trade and closer links. To the medical profession more doctors, better hospitals and training facilities. To the old age pensioners bigger pensions and free bus passes. To the industrialists an expanding market and reduced labour costs. Yes, he made no bones about wage restraint in his speech at Edinburgh on March 24th. This is one promise which doubtless will be kept:

  You can ask for this policy (wage restraint) if production and productivity are rising, you can ask for it if it is intended, if it is envisaged, against the background of a climate of true social justice.

The results of The New Britain under Labour will not be much different from those of the old Britain under the Tories, as far as workers are concerned. That Mr. Wilson is an astute politician is undeniable,. but it will be capitalism which will determine his actions in the months ahead, not his astuteness. It has happened many times before to politicians of all parties, which is why their policies show such remarkable similarity to each other. “Little Sir Echo" is the contemptuous expression which Wilson uses more than once in describing Tory imitations of Labour Policy. Apparently, he is not clever enough to realise just what a self-condemnation this really is.

Eddie Critichfield

Report on a visit to USA and Canada (1964)

Party News from the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the months July, August and September I was in the United States on a student vacation scheme. During this time I was in Boston for 10 weeks and in Montreal and Toronto for one week. In Boston I was able to take part in all the activities of the local, indoor and outdoor meetings, socials and leaflet distribution as well as attend the W.S.P. conference as our fraternal delegate. In September, together with W.S.P. members Rab and Lyle [I] visited Montreal and Toronto to meet members of the Socialist Party of Canada and attend various meetings that had been arranged.

BOSTON
The local (Branch) has a very active membership, both locally and nationally. As will be appreciated the political atmosphere in the United States is considerably different from that in Britain. There the working class have no interest in politics which quite literally is an in-fight between members of various rival political gangs without even the popular participation which occurs in Britain. This makes it all the harder for the American Socialists to put over our case. It means that some of the traditional activities of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, such as debates with opponents and large indoor meetings cannot be carried on. On the other hand, members in the U.S. have openings which we have not as for instance, the purchase of radio time and radio programmes in which listeners can participate by telephone.

In Boston activities are in the hands of a Local Administrative Committee, composed of the younger members of the Party. They are responsible for organising all activities which consist of indoor and outdoor meetings and leaflet distribution. Indoor meetings each week take the form of a talk or tape-recordings or a film followed by discussion. Outdoor meetings arc held every Sunday on Boston Common. The W.S.P. is the only organisation to avail themselves of these opportunities, although the conditions are not ideal owing to the persistent attempts by Cuban refugees and various patriots to shout down our speakers. Occasionally protest meetings on Civil Rights, peace, slum clearance etc. are covered by the Local’s literature sellers. During the University term other opportunities for putting over our case are available. All in all, prospects in Boston are hopeful.

MONTREAL
Members here speak French, but to assist in their activities, leaflets and literature in French are needed, especially as French Canada is in the middle of a period of political ferment, following the overthrow of the backward-looking Duplessis regime in 1960. Many ideas on Marxism and on separatism are circulated and it is important that our voice be heard.

TORONTO
Regular indoor and outdoor meetings are held in Toronto which, like Montreal is hoping soon to form a Local. Literature is sold, and it is hoped that with the help from other Locals, the support here will increase in the near future.

The hospitality and help received from members in both the United States and Canada was greatly appreciated and for which I am extremely grateful. It is a sign of the genuine fraternal relations which exist between the various sections of the Socialist Movement.

Adam Buick

Reminiscences of an old member (part 2) (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 can be read here.

When the 1914-1918 war broke out I was put in an internment camp. The long confinement at least offered opportunities for further enlightenment and discussion on politics. Lectures and meetings were held and prisoners were also free to debate subjects in all kinds of private circles, language classes, etc. Soon groups particularly interested in Socialism were regularly gathering around our platform. The discussion became particularly lively when Comrade Neumann, also an active member of the S.P.G.B. (translator of Kautzky's Erfurter programme) later joined the army of internees. Apart from lectures, a very successful May Day meeting was held with Neumann as the principal speaker. Among the many adherents to the Socialist case were Mundl, Guilke, Bankofsky, who all joined the S.P.G.B. after their release. With others, after I had been deported, I kept in correspondence from the Continent for many years. Most of them have long since died.

If there was comparative freedom to propagate revolutionary socialism on the Continent for a few years after the first war, it became rapidly more risky with the advent of Hitler. Even here, in Austria, the struggle for power between the two big electoral machines, had become so intense and bitter that it led to that terrible butchery on the Vienna Ringstrasse in July 1927, when nearly a hundred demonstrators were shot dead by Austrian police and army—and to other innumerable victims. Then in February 1934 Dollfuss and the Heimwehr smashed the Social Democratic Party in another, far greater, bloodbath. In 1935 Dollfuss was murdered and in 1938 Austria was incorporated in the German Reich. Then came the Second World War and the four power military occupation, lasting till 1956.

Even what little the few of us did, or rather could do, was not without peril, especially as personally I had, of course, not always kept my socialist light under a bushel before the years that were so fatal for Austrian, German, Italian and Spanish democracy. In Vienna alone more than 1,500 persons were executed by the Nazis for political reasons.

I may be allowed to repeat here what I wrote in a letter to the S.P.G.B.'s International Secretary:

"While the very democratic British government takes the credit for my one and only victimisation for political reasons (they repatriated me to the Continent against my will in 1919 after four years internment as alien-enemy and undesirable subject) the family (wife, mother-in-law and two boys) survived unmolested the fascist onslaught on democracy in the civil war in Austria in 1934, the Anschluss of Hitler in 1938, and the second world war. As a socialist I never lifted a finger in support of those criminal capitalist operations. Though I could not, of course, after the 1934 upheaval continue socialist propaganda (as I had done in England, especially in the Internment camp) and had, until the departure of the occupation troops in 1956, to keep underground, I am proud to share with other comrades the merit of never having allowed the socialist light to be extinguished. My radical politics were known (if not shared) by the colleagues at the office where I worked and in wider circles, so that a really anxious time began for us in Vienna in 1934; especially for my wife, who had never forgotten our fate at the end of the first war. But I was lucky—nobody ever betrayed me or played me a dirty trick, although practically everybody who knew me and mostly appeared to agree with my criticism of things, turned out to have actually been or had become Nazi."

Considering the very troublous times we lived through, we did relatively well and had many good opportunities with jobs here, traveling extensively in Europe. My son Lawrence returned to London before Hitler came; he was greatly helped by the comrades and soon joined the Party, in which he is heart and soul.

My family and I had to leave my job in London at the outbreak of the 1914 war. After my internment in 1915 and repatriation at the end of the war, my London employers offered me a job at one of their enterprises in the Rheinland, with accommodation for my family near the works. If we left the firm and the Rheinland three years later for Austria, it was only to fill a contract I had previously made with the Austrian Krupp Metalworks Berndorf, where we stayed for four years. Our late comrade Fitzgerald visited us there in 1926 and again in 1928. By that time we had moved to Vienna, where Fitzgerald saw me at my final job, with the Austrian Official Tourist Office. Both his visits were fruitful for Socialist propaganda, as arrangements were made for distributing the Socialist Standard in quite a number of bookshops in Vienna. A large number of the pamphlet Socialism and Religion was also distributed at "language courses" I held at the Krupp works. I am sorry that not a single copy of that pamphlet is left in my hands now. Sorry also that interest in Socialism could not easily be revived after the dark years that followed, and that a good number of comrades I had gathered around me dropped out. But new contacts have now been made with a group of dissenters from the big S.P.A. the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten, which issues a monthly typed paper called the Wiener Freies Wort. Direct contact with the S.P.G.B.'s Overseas Contact Secretary has long been established and it is  our ambition to make the S.P.A. dissenters adopt the Declaration of Principles and eventually to make it a true revolutionary companion party. There is real hope for the future, but we must not lose patience with those  undoubtedly earnest workers. A challenging sixteen page pamphlet and Election Manifesto is being distributed. It contains, of course, the Declaration of Principles.

Has the world changed since I set out? In some respects it certainly has. As I have mentioned before, in 1902 there was no thought or fear of war that was to come; you could travel across Europe without passports, you could work in any country without labour permits. In all my wanderings in Germany, Switzerland, France and England, the first time I ever had to report my presence to a police office was in London at the outbreak of the first war. What a change indeed has come over all this! Today people are hedged in everywhere by frontiers, barriers and police guards, exacting and scrutinizing your personal documents. Some frontiers, made more impassible by barbed wire, often electrically charged, and hidden bombs, run across big cities like Jerusalem, Berlin, and others. There is one thing that has not changed in well over a hundred years, one thing that has so far survived all crises and upheavals, and dozens of major capitalist wars. This one unchanged feature is the fundamental status of the working class of the world, as the disinherited wage slaves of the capitalist class.

R. Frank