Between the Lines: The food problem (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The food problem

The lunatics are most definitely running the asylum. This Week, Next Week (BBC1. 6 April) devoted one hour to a studio discussion about the problem of food surpluses. You see, there is too much food in Europe — 14 million tons of EEC grain is currently locked away in store and by 1990 the grain surplus is predicted to reach 90 million tons Minister of Agricultural Lunacy, John Selwyn Gummer, stated that "Now we're producing too much . . .  it's damaging the rest of the world, especially the poorest people" Funny that: I thought that "the poorest" people were dying in their millions for lack of food. Grain production has increased from two to four tons an acre in a very short time, moaned NFU spokesman David Naish. and this is causing major problems. Indeed, it seems that the British government is now storing beef in secret warehouses in London — Gummer admitted that this was the case but not one of the experts presented proposed that this beef and grain and all this other "surplus" food should be available immediately for free access. Had someone made such a suggestion — the idea of forgetting about money and profits and the nonsense of the market and producing food solely to eat — they would no doubt have been dismissed as a utopian crank. So the lunatics proceeded to think of ways to solve the problem of food over-production and the starving continued to starve and we have no doubt that Selwyn Gummer and the company had a pleasant Sunday lunch when they left the studio.

Make ’em work

This was the title of a Panorama programme (BBC 1. 7 April) about new policies in certain states of the USA to make it compulsory to work for the state before any welfare payments are granted. In Oklahoma it is compulsory for single women to seek work, even if they have given birth within the previous two months. No work, no payment — no payment, no money to spend — no money to spend, no food for them or their children. It's known as Workfare — a better term is wage slavery In West Virginia unemployed miners are forced to sweep the streets or help the police force as uniformed agents of coercion if they want to receive benefits. So much for the "land of the free" In California unemployed wage slaves are forced to go on courses designed to "make them want to work for wages". In the room where this course is being run is a large sign saying "THINK EMPLOYER". What can be better for capitalism than to educate the working class to be desperate for wage slavery to take whatever jobs are on offer — to look at themselves at all times from the angle of how exploitable they can be? In Britain young workers are already pushed on to YTS schemes where they are ripped off because of their economically insecure and unprotected position. How long might it be before "Workfare" is tried on the unemployed of Britain? Watching this programme showed just how unfree and vulnerable to economic coercion the wage-slave class is.

An orange fool

World In Action (ITV, 7 April) offered an introduction to a political leader who is arguably crazier than Ian Paisley. Peter Robinson, an MP who has close links with the para-military UDA, was shown to be a calculating, bigoted nationalist who is quite happy to let workers stone and kill one another for the sake of obsolete national aims. Robinson was asked why he attacked the IRA for its murders when he failed to criticise the recent violent rampages of the Loyalist thugs. We can answer the question: under capitalism a leader needs to be a committed hypocrite who will justify the indefensible when it is being carried out by his followers for the sake of his political interest. Anti-working-class leaders like Peter Robinson would not know a genuine political principle if it smacked them in the face Unfortunately for the workers of Ireland, it is they who are receiving the body blows and not well-protected, well-salaried stirrers of sectarian hatred like Robinson.

Update

Readers who followed our reference to the C4 Diverse Reports programme which was given over to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers" Party will be interested to learn that Channel Four have felt unable to deal with our complaint of being excluded and have passed our message to the IBA. We await their considered response.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: News priorities (1986)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

News priorities

On the day the Space Shuttle exploded, thousands of people — most of them under five — died of malnutrition. There was no report on the news. And how many lives were in ruins that day because mothers could not feed or clothe their children, families were living in overcrowded slums, or children were turning to drugs to escape the reality of a miserable system? Approximately eighty per cent of news broadcasts were devoted to the deaths of a group of people who had chosen to go on a dangerous mission, but was it really necessary for American TV networks to point cameras at the relatives of those killed, catching every twitch of their faces?

What is called "news" is determined by the perverse priorities of capitalism. We cannot help thinking that the America government was grieving rather more over the setback this even will have caused to the Star Wars military project than over the day's many other victims.

Spitting Image

The doubt in my mind about Spitting Image is the extent to which it fosters the belief that by ridiculing leaders — and in some cases their appearances rather than their ideas — one is being political. In fact, it can be argued that precisely this kind of comedy defuses whatever anger workers have against the system itself. And the politicians probably don't mind the publicity. Revolutions do not, after all, start as a result of watching TV puppet shows. The question worth pondering is, are they delayed because workers are sitting in their armchairs laughing at caricatures instead of the real TV comedy: the party political broadcasts?

The SWP show

Diverse Reports of 22 January (Channel 4) was virtually a party political broadcast on behalf of the Leninist Socialist Workers' Party. Its content was predictable, commencing with the absurd statement that the Labour Party has recently moved away from socialist policies. When has the Labour Party ever stood for anything but capitalism? The fact is that the SWP is just as confused about socialism as the Labour Party, and it was indeed strange for them to devote their programme to exposing the Labourites when they urged workers to vote for them in the last election and will do so in the next. Nevertheless, the Socialist Party is in favour of minority parties having access to TV slots, even if they have as little worth saying as is clearly the case with the SWP. Whenever the Socialist Party has approached TV companies (including the nominally radical C4) and asked for a slot of this kind, we have been told that it is against their regulations to give time to minority parties. Even when one of our prospective parliamentary candidates appeared on C4's Comment a few months ago, he was forbidden to mention the party's name. If that is the policy of the TV companies, why was it not applied in the case of the SWP? C4 has to come out in the open and state whether or not minority political parties are to be censored, leaving viewers with the impression that they have nothing to say. if their undemocratic policy has now been rejected, then the SWP has had its chance and we want ours. If the policy is to be upheld, then we accuse C4 of hypocrisy and call for an explanation. The matter will be raised with the TV controllers concerned and we will report fully their response — or lack of one.

Entering an institution

They say that marriage is not a word but a sentence, and if anyone needed any proof they had only to watch Desmond Wilcox's voyeuristic documentary series, The Marriage (Wednesdays, 9.30 pm, BBC1). The series followed the first year of married life of a couple of people who seemed pretty typical. The degeneration of their relationship from unlimited affection to evident strain was almost entirely caused by money. Almost every argument they had was about it — he spent more than she liked; she wanted money for their own home; he took on a new job so that he could earn more; he had to buy a new car but she wanted it to be a cheaper model. Here on our screens was a microcosm of what is going on in most working-class relationships. The souring effect of money is something we will probably never comprehend fully until it has been abolished.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Sinn Fein, Game Shows and Live Aid (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Feigners

Beatrix Campbell, in Diverse Reports (C4, 3 July), sought to portray Sinn Fein as a progressive, caring, reforming party—an image it seeks to put across to electors. It should not be surprising that a programme showed Sinn Fein's policies without constant reference to the party's support for nationalist murderers; after all, the Tory and Labour parties support national armies committed to obscene acts of violence, but this is not mentioned every time there is a programme about their policies.

And having seen the uncensored picture, what are we to conclude? Quite simply, that Sinn Fein is just another party of reformist politicians who want to run capitalism. As the party's leader Gerry Adams, said, "All we can do is  . . . achieve those very small gains by working along with the people within the system". So much for Assembly member, Danny Morrison's throwaway comment that Sinn Fein is "a revolutionary party". From Adams we heard the usual vague claims of a reformist leader: first the nationalist movement must be built up to oppose British rule, and then after the British have withdrawn and Ireland is independent there will be "the beginnings of a socialist society". What does this mean? Uncensored Adams neglected to tell us. Campbell, who is a feminist, asked Adams what the position of women would be once Ireland had achieved Home/Rome Rule; she stated that "for women this happens to be one of the most repressive cultures you can think of." But Gerry told her that her question was based on "cultural imperialism" and she, being English, should learn that Irish people are different.

At the end of the programme one was left with the clear impression of a political party based on the twin confusions of nationalist illusion and reformist promise. If there ever is a united Ireland, presided over by Sinn Fein, it will be another capitalist state and the workers living under it will detest Adams and his fellow would-be rulers as much as they do their present representatives.

Even without the terrorist violence, which socialist unequivocally condemn, there was plenty shown about Sinn Fein to justify the unreserved hostility of socialists towards them.

Money sickness

It was D. H. Lawrence who referred to "the collective money-madness of mankind",  and where better to  observe that madness than in the gambling establishments of Las Vegas. Showdown at Glitter Gulch was a documentary about the world poker championship (BBC1, 3 July)  - an event where the winner gets a million dollars. It was an obscene spectacle, all these idlers throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to a table while millions of workers go without a decent supper and millions more die for lack of money for food. It was not "human nature" which led these men to indulge in an insane monetary ritual — it was a social system which elevates money into the god of life and trains those with more of it than sense to invest their energies in acquiring more. A mad system drives men mad and this programme was a peep through the window of one of the top-class asylums.

The price is indignity

The same "collective money-madness", but at a cheaper rate for the proles, is The Price is Right (don't know or care when it's on). The programme succeeds in being the ultimate in tasteless money fetishism. Crowds of impoverished workers scream and throw dignity to the wind as the prospect of guessing the price of an electric carving knife turns them into human cash registers. The aim of the game is to guess how much commodities are worth and if the guess is near enough to the price you win. Game shows generally portray capitalism as its most grotesque, and the trouble with watching them is that we are supposed to applaud contestants for doing well.

Live aid

Live Aid for Africa (BBC, 13 July) demonstrated several things that it did not intend, The purpose of the concert was to raise money to stop people starving to death in Africa. Yet its effect will be minimal, negligible, crumbs thrown into an ocean of despair. What then did the event show? First of all, that workers, even when motivated by immense goodwill and collective concern, cannot solve capitalism's problems. During the course of the sixteen-hour concert British workers donated a mere £4 million in telephone pledges, less than the British Government spends on the military machine every three hours every day; less than the richest woman in Britain (the Queen( receives as interest on her personal investments in one week. Workers were 'phoning up and saying that they would sell their cars and donate their precious savings to the worthy cause — but asking the impoverished in Britain to feed the starving of Africa solves precisely nothing.

Secondly, the show demonstrated just how superficial is the moralising self-righteousness of those who do not understand the capitalist system. Periodically we would be urged — by millionaires who became rich by dressing up in fancy costumes and singing about love through sore throats — to "feed the world". But why is food dumped while people starve? Why do some people have banquets while others do not? In short, the whole event was an invitation to weep at the symptoms, and to hell with any concern about the disease. Indeed, Bob Geldof (who may be sincere, but it certainly naive to a dangerous degree) was seen repeatedly throwing his arms in the air, like a man who feels something but does not know what, and declaring that governments should "do something". In fact, governments are doing something: running capitalism and feeding the capitalists' hunger for profits.

Thirdly, the show proved just how musicians have become incapable of performing without record producers to twiddle knobs and make them sound any good. Some of the sets from Wembley and Philadelphia, presented without the benefit of studio treatment, ranged from not very good to pathetic. Demonstrated above all, however, was the power of communication technology: fourteen international satellites beamed the show to 50 million TV sets, reaching an estimated audience of 1.5 billion people. But just as this technology can unite millions of workers for a lofty, if ultimately futile, moral cause, so too can it bind them together for more sinister propaganda messages, such as those demanded for example in the build-up to war. Left in the hands of the capitalist minority the means of mass communication are a potent weapon. But used for socialist purposes, think of how the worldwide unity forged by Live Aid could be turned into an instrument for making democracy work within the global village.

Watching the show until the final performance by Bob Dylan (not an occasion worthy of the wait, as it turned out), I was struck by an overwhelming sense of depression — not just at the thought that fellow human beings are starving to death, although that is good enough reason for a sleepless night, but because all the goodwill, energy, determination and technological know-how put into "doing something about it" will not feed the world. Despite Geldof's moral crusade the obscenity of mass human misery will go on and on and on until Elvis Costello stops singing "all you need is love" and the workers realise that the world os ours for the taking. And finally the national anthem came on, and by the time it got to "Long To Reign Over Us" I was fast asleep.

Steve Coleman