Observations: Your country? Your interest? (1986)

The Observations Column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your country? Your interest?

Does Paul Hogan, the Australian comedian, have more in common with his fellow countryman Rupert Murdoch than with Billy Connolly or Lenny Henry? Does an English electrician. doctor or fireman have more in common with the Duke of Buccleuch and his 268,000 acres or the Duke of Westminster and his land value of over two billion pounds than with a Spanish. Russian or Mexican electrician, doctor or fireman? One glance into your back garden or at your alarm clock will help you to answer these questions.

According to government figures, the richest 3.2 per cent of people in Britain today own 84 per cent of listed shares. 91 per cent of private companies and 88 per cent of land. This is what a "property owning democracy" means — a democracy where three-quarters of the daily newspapers are owned by just three millionaire companies, where non-elective judges, generals and civil servants wield tremendous power. None of the lords, dukes and baronesses are elected, nor are any of the multinational companies who also have a marked effect on workers' lives. Wealth is owned and controlled by a small section of the population — the capitalist class. They are a parasitic, redundant class who are dependent on the vast majority of the world's population, the working class. The workers run the present system from top to bottom, they produce everything in it and own nothing except their ability to work, which they sell at a price called a wage in order to live. If you feel your wages are not high enough, that your rent or mortgage payments are getting you down, that you can never seem to save any money and that you are always dominated by money-related worries, then that doesn't make you typically British but a typical member of the working class. The only difference between workers from different geographical regions is sometimes the extent to which they are exploited.

What workers need to do is to question, not only their loyalty to "their" country, but of what benefit, and to whom is this loyalty of any significance? They need to question a system which is based on rivalry; which sees only a minority of the world's population living in luxury at the expense of the vast majority; where tens of millions die of starvation every year although scientists estimate that the present world population could be fed seven times over. It is a system based on profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs that needs to be questioned.

Edwina on health

Commonsense would be enough to tell most people that poverty is a major cause of ill-health. Nevertheless it is always useful to have intuition backed up by hard facts such as those contained in a report from Bristol University which shows that poverty in the North East of England is a cause of premature death, chronic ill-health and low birth weight.

But commonsense and statistical evidence are not enough to convince Edwina Currie, the newly appointed Health Minister, who suggested in a talk to an audience in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one of the cities covered by the health survey, that ill-health had more to do with ignorance about good eating habits than with poverty or unemployment. She advised people to eat more vegetables and natural fibre and drink more milk. This advice is about as useful as telling starving refugees in the Sudan that they wouldn't suffer from malnutrition if only they would eat more sensibly.

Duke’s hazards

Independent is not an adjective usually associated with the BBC. No doubt as part of the Thatcher administration's campaign against alleged "anti-government bias", a new chair of the BBC Board of Governors has been appointed to replace Stuart Young, who died recently. The only qualifications that the new chair. Marmaduke, "Duke" Hussey, would seem to have that equip him for the job are his connections with certain aristocratic elements within the ruling class. He is married to Lady Susan Hussey, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, daughter of the 12th Earl Waldegrave and big sister to William Waldegrave. Tory MP and Minister for the Environment.

His connections with the media are somewhat less impressive. He was a chief executive and managing director of Times newspapers in the 1970s and was responsible for the confrontation with the print unions over manning levels and wage structures which took The Times and the Sunday Times off the streets. More recently he was brought in as a chair of the ILR station Radio West, when it was experiencing economic difficulties.

His new job as Chair of the BBC governors is just one of the many appointments that are in the gift of the Prime Minister. Rumoured to be even closer to the Tories than his predecessor he is likely to ensure that the diet of television offered to us by the BBC gets even more bland.

These FoolishThings . . . (1995)

The Scavenger column from the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger, who will publish the best.

“I won't claim the Workhouses didn't have their problems. but they were set up by people who cared. " Edwina Currie MP.

Central eating - a letter in a local newspaper:

“Did this caring government not promise to provide a little more for heating to keep us old ones warm?

I applied for heating allowance at the age of 81.

I was refused, so with my 25p bonus for reaching 80 years I bought a packet of extra strong mints.

So there you are! I had something to cat and something to keep me warm at the same time.” 

L. Edwards.

Bimbos for Christ’s sake!

Deep cleavages and micro skirts are currently the height of fashion for those models who give prostitutes a bad name. But now religion is becoming fashionable too. Girls like Samantha Fox and Mandy Smith (ex-Mrs Bill Wyman) have embraced a few men and bared a few square feet of flesh in their time. But now, apparently, they arc embracing Christ and baring their souls as well.

Let’s face it — it’s got to be true if the barbie dolls believe it.

"We are prepared to shoot and kill in the interest of society. " Chief Constable James Anderton.

Dazed and confused

Emma Nicholson, Conservative MP, writing in the Mail on Sunday bewails the fact that charities are becoming career vehicles for highly paid executives who run them like businesses. She says of her own experience with Save the Children.

"As our fundraising improved, so did the notion that success should be measured in terms of the latest spectacular increase in collected cash rather than in the number of lives saved or bettered by the relief of poverty. "

The Scavenger

Sting in the Tail: An Outbreak of Truth (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Outbreak of Truth

Edwina Currie the former Under Secretary of Health had to resign because she upset a powerful section of the capitalist class.

Her comment on ITV 3rd December, '88 that "most of the egg production in this country is now infected by salmonella" caused an uproar among that section of the capitalist class who have their capital invested in egg production. As sales, and of course profits, fell they mounted a campaign to get rid of her.

Now socialists have no sympathy with capitalist lick-spittles like Currie. Her insulting remarks on workers dying of hypothermia (lack of food and warmth) — "they should knit themselves woolly nightcaps” — recall the "let them eat cake" of the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy.

But her forced resignation is really somewhat unique. She had to resign because she told the truth!

An outbreak of truth in the Houses of Parliament would certainly be extremely refreshing. Say Nigel Lawson admitting that capitalism controls governments and not the other way about. That he is powerless to control slumps and booms. Or Neil Kinnock admitting that he is opposed to socialism and just wants to run the buying and selling system.

Alas, it appears that truth is less catching than salmonella and Edwina Currie's case is an isolated one.

Lake Plonk

A search through a European Atlas will not reveal its location. But it's there somewhere . . . unchartered, its location unsuspected.

It's Surplusland, a European country with a weird geography. We know something of its topography from newspaper reports. It has Beef Hills, Butter Mountains and a Wine Lake.

In The Independent 24 January ' 89 we were given some of the details of the Wine Lake.

There were 250 million gallons of surplus alcohol (distilled wine alcohol) for disposal last year. Another 118 million gallons is expected this year. A further 92 million gallons is due for disposal Inside of the next three years.

Why not give it away?, you ask. Well to those of you who fancy a couple of free glasses of wine with your Salmonella Chicken Supreme, the Select Committee on European Legislation (Third Report) has the answer.

In practice there appears to be little demand for wine alcohol as such which reflects the cost of production .

In other words — it's not profitable !

A society that produces and stores surpluses of beef, butter, wheat and wine while millions starve is an absolute obscenity.

It's not Cricket

Annoyed at the cricketing authorities' decision to ban players from the England Test team If they played in South Africa, Mr. Norris McWhirter of the Freedom Association has attempted to take action through the courts.

The Independent 25th January, 1989 referring to the Association's defence of Zola Budd and its recent cricket legal case, stated:

The inevitable conclusion is that it must support the race policies of the South African government but this is not so. Both cases the association says, concern the freedom of individuals to carry out their business or affairs as they chose without interference from bullying authorities.

Mr. McWhirter's organisation makes great play of defending a sportsman or woman's right to go anywhere they wish in their sporting careers irrespective of politics.

This apparent disinterest in politics seems a little strange when one recalls that the same McWhirter wrote to British athletes prior to the Moscow Olympics urging them not to go to that country because of Russia's invasion of j Afghanistan.

Writing to Linsey MacDonald, the Scottish runner, he referred to athletes who didn't win medals and said:

. . . having gained no medals you will have earned the contempt of millions of your countrymen.

Such a letter to a sixteen year old schoolgirl is as good an example of bullying as we’ve come across.

The whitewash attempt of The Independent should fool no one. The Freedom Association is just another bunch of well-heeled toffs anxious to protect their class privilege against any real or imagined threat.

Its deep involvement in the Grunwick dispute of 1976, its anti-trade union stance recently against the postal workers proves that "freedom" to the quaintly named "Freedom Association" means freedom to exploit and grow fat on the unpaid labour of the working class.

What's up Doc ?

David Mellor, the Minister of State for Health, is concerned at the long hours worked by junior hospital doctors.

But not too concerned, for according to The Independent 25th January 1989:

But he confirmed the government's intention to oppose the backbench Bill scheduled for debate In the Lords tonight setting a 72 hour maximum legal limit on the junior doctor's working week.

After a survey in Bristol of junior doctors Dr. Ruth Gilbert (quoted In The Independent same day) said :

Suffering from sleep deprivation, Junior doctors are likely to perform monotonous tasks badly, make mistakes over drug dosages and experience mood changes that will make them less sympathetic to their patients.

When asked about the worst aspects of their work 85 per cent of the men and 95 per cent of the women said "exhaustion and hours of work" followed by "acting as dogsbodies doing unrewarding work."

In February 1848 a pamphlet written in German was published in London. It referred to the position of doctors inside capitalism. It stated:

The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The pamphlet was The Communist Manifesto. The authors were Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Not—so—bon appetit (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing is clear in all the fuss and confusion about salmonella in eggs, listeria in cheese and BSE in beef: the statements of, and advice from, ministers have not been fit for human consumption. There is nothing new in that: at the time when the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl passed over Britain, letting fall its lethal chemicals with the rain onto the sheep of North Wales and Cumberland, the then Minister of Agriculture was self-sacrificially emphatic about how harmless it was. He declared that he was going to spend that week-end “enthusiastically" eating British lamb. So far he has not grown two heads, but evidence has emerged that the meat in those parts was dangerous to eat then and will remain so years after the fall-out.

Although the most recent row became public with Edwina Currie's famous remark about how widespread salmonella is in egg production, that was by no means the beginning of the affair. Currie's reputation for valuing career-sustaining self publicity over facts made her vulnerable to the kind of assault which the farming interests launched on her. When we saw TV pictures of adorably fluffy chicks on their way to being gassed because of her ill-considered words, her fate was sealed.

But anyone with the most cursory acquaintance with what passes for farming and methods of the food industry had known for a long time about the active threats to health which they represented. There has been no shortage of information, available to anyone who wanted it, about the effects on cattle and on the people who eat beef of pumping the poor beasts full of hormones, not to cure them of some disease but to make them more copious producers of milk and beef. Yet another hormone — bovine somatropin — is now under test, although an unusually sensitive National Farmers' Union seems to be opposed to its use, presumably because they are anxious to avoid more bad publicity for their members.

Battery hens — quite apart from the sickening conditions in which they spend their brief, wretched lives — have long been known to be a source of salmonella poisoning, made worse by the fact that they have commonly been fed on the already diseased remains of slaughtered hens. That is why there have been warnings, albeit muted, about the need to cook chickens thoroughly and to avoid re-heating them.

So why didn't the government simply publicise the whole issue, a long time ago? Why didn't they tell us not to touch any intensively reared meat, or eggs from battery hens, or soft cheese? Or, more effective, why didn't they rush through parliament some sort of legislation to outlaw the production methods which cause the illnesses?

We saw the answers to these questions in the Currie affair. Intensive food production was developed because it is more profitable than the old, slower, less certain methods. The big drugs companies have enormous investments tied up in the production of the chemicals which the farmers shove into their animals. If enough people become scared of buying the food, demand for it can collapse to the point at which it becomes unprofitable to produce it. That may save a few lives and prevent a lot of very distressing sickness but it would play havoc with the profits of the farmers and the drug companies and that is not what the government is there for. Governments exist, not to look after the wellbeing of what is called the consumer — workers who spend their wages on the things they need to re-produce their energies — but to protect the profits of the class who own the means of production, which in this case means the farming industry. the food production firms and the drug companies.

That is why the first official reaction to the slightest breath of truth about something like salmonella in eggs is to rush to conceal the facts. If public pressure becomes so fierce that some of the facts must be allowed out they will often be so mangled and restricted as to be unreconcilable with the truth. This stubborn rearguard action can go on for a very long time, while workers endure painful and possibly fatal illnesses because of their ignorance of the facts.

The great food scandal brings us once again up against the reality that capitalism puts profits before people. Currie's big mistake was that, while she so ardently supports this social system, she allowed herself to voice a passing doubt about the effects of this principle. The penalty she paid, was a lot less distressing than what was endured by those who experienced what it meant from the business end of a sick-bed.

Greasy Pole: Good News For The Tories (2002)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is some good news for the Tories. All is not lost for them. It is true that, as their conference this year abundantly showed, they are at a very low ebb. Nowadays few people take them seriously – and they themselves are having a struggle doing just that. The term shadow ministers is particularly apt for their front bench because in the shadows is where they stay. Their leader, Iain Duncan Smith, shows every sign of growing more desperate by the day; as a climax to their conference he actually made a virtue of being a quiet man – a reputation a politician will usually try hard to avoid. They have rummaged out 25 policies to offer the voters but these are little more than tardy admissions that when they were last in power they were indeed the “nasty party” (as if there are any “nice” ones). An example of a party being nasty was in a letter written in 1996 by Ted Heath’s election agent, which warned him about the benefits we were all enjoying during those years of Tory rule:

“Younger, traditionally Conservative supporters have mostly had a very difficult time over the last 6 or 7 years . . . having had to face, in worse cases, redundancy, negative equity, failing businesses or even bankruptcy.”

A man with much to be quiet about

At this year’s conference we had the nauseating spectacle of David “Two Brains” Willetts, the shadow Work and Pensions Minister, declaring that “. . . the Tory war on lone parents is over”. It would, of course, have been better for those lone parents if he had said this at the time the war was being waged so enthusiastically by his party. One speaker after another rushed to the microphone to confess to past “mistakes” and to promise a brighter, more caring future as if the days had never been, when Tory conferences cheered and stamped their feet at Thatcher defiantly telling them that she -her policies – were “not for turning” and when she insisted, in the face of powerful opposition, that “there is no alternative”.

Then there is the matter of sleaze, which cost the Tories so many votes in 1997 and which they had fervently hoped had died the death. Any ideas they had on that score were brutally suppressed by Edwina Currie spilling the beans about her relationship with John Major. In this scandalous soil were nourished a thousand saloon bar jokes – it was David Mellor all over again but much worse. Smutty humour does not contribute to a political party being taken seriously.

Nineteen Forty Five

It has always been very difficult for the Tories to reconcile themselves to the fact that they are occasionally out of power; they regard such episodes as brief, insane interludes in the natural order of things. There was a time when this was perhaps a more valid attitude because, as in the Thatcher years, they seemed to be there for all time, to be the natural party of power. The difference now is that Labour’s majority has endured, and looks like continuing that way for some time. Voting Conservative is simply not fashionable at present, as if the natural order of things political has undergone a change. It means that Blair’s majority, founded on Labour’s success in making themselves almost indistinguishable from the Tories, must be chipped at because it is unlikely to quickly crumble away.

In some respects there was a parallel to this before 1945. The previous election to that, in November 1935, had produced a House of Commons with 425 Tories and allies against 180 opposition MPs, of which 154 were Labour. Had an election been possible in 1940, the Conservative majority may have been reduced but, on the evidence of past elections, it would have been very unlikely for it to have been overturned for some time. The crucial element in bringing about the change which produced the massive Labour majority in 1945 was, of course, the war. The working class had been promised that if they buckled down to the war effort – worked hard, coped with all the hardship, fear and grief, if they fought and died – they would be rewarded with a better world free of the mistakes of the past. It was seductive stuff, which benefited the Labour Party – and the working class were vulnerable to it, electing the Attlee government by an emphatic margin. Ted Heath, who had to rethink his plans to start a career in politics because of the size of that Labour majority, described the mood in a letter:

“. . . the average man who had been fully employed during the war thought of the unemployment he suffered before the war and decided he would not have the Tories again”.

Even so, for some people the result was a shock. “They have elected a Labour government” wailed a bejewelled woman in an exclusive London club, “ and the people will not stand for it”. The Tory MP Henry Channon – a rich, pampered, useless heir to a fortune who married into the Guinness family thus making himself even richer and enabling him to inherit the safe Tory seat of Southend which had been “represented” by one or other member of the family since 1918 – and which passed on to his son who was equally rich and useless – moaned that he was “. . . too ill and angry to reflect seriously on the disastrous Election results. I am stunned and shocked by the country’s treachery”. Within a fortnight there was some relief for his shock and anger because “the Stock Market has recovered and is actually soaring. Evidently it does not fear the Socialist [sic] Government”. With all this going on it was not entirely surprising that about a month later he came away from a meeting of the 1922 Committee “fearing that the Tory party was definitely dead”.

Pessimism

But that was too pessimistic from the Tory point of view because the party quickly got down to the arduous process of recasting itself in policies and attitudes designed to answer the doubts of Heath’s “average man”. In this they had some political talent to call on – like Heath himself, Enoch Powell, Iain Macleod – whose abilities in the murky world of politics helped them later to become high profile leaders of the party. These people, along with those who had been hardened by their time as ministers in the wartime government, were skilled at touching on the most sensitive nerves of the Attlee government, who were themselves exhausted by the stress of being in that government and then re-building British capitalism after the war. And all that Tory effort bore fruit when, at the next election in 1950, they came within a whisker of success.

In the aftermath of 1945 and later during the late 1960s, the Tories showed great ability in asserting themselves as the supremely natural party of government over British capitalism. So they can take comfort from the memory of that recovery, in the knowledge that although they have been out of power before they have not lost their talent to dupe the working class and can do it again. This opens the all important question of whether it matters. Capitalism is too vast, too powerful, too intrusive, to be affected to any significant degree by which party holds the job of trying to control it. Whoever sits in power over it capitalism continues to impoverish and repress most of its people. There are many symptoms of poverty – none of which ever troubled the likes of Henry Channon. For example the Institute for Public Policy Research recently found that children living in the more deprived neighbourhoods are three times more likely to be knocked down in a road accident than those who live in richer areas. This is not because poorer children don’t understand how to cross the road safely but because they lack access to safe playing areas like good gardens or playgrounds. Their playground is the street, where they socialise without safe adult supervision and sometimes – too often – get knocked down. So poverty – capitalism – is unsafe, it frightens and it injures and it kills. That is what being vulnerable – to use one of the Tories’ favourite buzz words – really means.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: These You have Loved (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the Tories who were forced by the voters to spend more time with their families was the egregious David Evans, once the MP for Welwyn Hatfield. Evans made himself famous for his robust views on crime, race, gender and other such issues. This did not seem to damage him until, shortly before the election, what he had thought was a cosy private chat to some sixth-formers was recorded and publicised. This showed Evans in his true colours; a crass denunciation of his Labour opponent as a single mother with a "bastard" child was mixed with some bigoted nonsense about crime and skin colour and an insistence that the Birmingham Six were not only guilty of the offences they had been jailed for but had also probably killed a great many more people while they were about it. Then, for good measure. Evans sneered at fellow Tory MP—a minister no less—as "dead from the neck up”.

The bigotry and arrogance of this speech illustrated pretty accurately what a lot of voters had begun to dislike and fear about the Tories and about the prospect of giving them a fifth term in power. What would people like Evans get up to if they ever got the idea in their heads that, no matter how they behaved, they would never lose their seats? It was all put into words by—as you might expect—Richard Littlejohn, who prides himself as being the voice the man-in-the-saloon-bar where, apparently, the true heart of Britain is supposed to beat. According to Littlejohn there was no need for anyone, apart from a few feeble trendies in places like Islington, to get upset at what Evans had said because the man had merely spoken the truth—like the good, solid, staunch Englishman he is he had said a few things which most other people thought but were afraid to put into words.

Reunion

Of course if Littlejohn had got it right it would be advisable to keep clear of all saloon bars in future because they are obviously crawling with the most appalling bores and half-wits imaginable. But what are we to make of the reaction to Evans of his then colleagues in the Commons, typified by Edwina Currie, who coyly told us that while she may disagree with this views she—and other MPs—loved Evans to bits? (Currie is another ex-MP, although in her case she will be spending more time with her pens and paper or her word processor or whatever she uses to churn out those trashy novels.) The voters in Welwyn Hatfield gave the answer, when they replaced Evans with the woman whose unmarried motherhood was such a worry to him in an 11-percent swing. We can only hope that Evans will now be too busy running his cleaning company to bother us with any more of his insane, pernicious drivel.

If he has time he may be able to arrange the occasional reunion with other ex-MPs whose views are so similar to his. If so. at the top of his list should be Terry Dicks, who was not actually defeated at the general election because he did not give the voters the chance. Dicks won Hayes and Harlington in 1983, when the Labour Party was riven by the defection of their MP to the SDP. In 1987 Dicks increased his majority but in 1992 he held on by the skin of his teeth, with only 53 votes keeping him in Parliament. Over the years Dicks clearly took a realistic view of his chances of re-election if of very little else—and decided to look for a constituency with a safer majority. Perhaps he hoped to find one with larger, noisier, saloon bars because some of his stated views made David Evans look like a wet. But it was not to be; Dicks hawked his candidature around but he was too unsavoury for even the Tories and he had to observe the election from the sidelines—while his old seat at Hayes and Harlington showed how shrewd he had been to look elsewhere by putting up a Labour majority of over 14.000.

Eccentrics

What was is that had made Dicks so unattractive, not just to the voters of Hayes and Harlington but to selection committees in his own party? Could it have been those opinions which he perhaps assumed would be so welcome in the saloon bars with the approval spreading out. like ripples in the water? There was everything to be said, he thought, for flogging or hanging people convicted of appropriate crimes. Anyone travelling from Scotland to support the Scottish team in an international at Wembley was a "pig". Homosexual people were perverts who could be deterred by sprays (of what?) or red-hot pokers (we shall not elaborate on that particular proposed penal reform). Having heard all that no-one would be surprised that Dicks viewed black people as generally bone idle and so was not in favour of the relaxation of immigration controls.

It’s not on record whether Dicks was also "loved to bits" by his fellow legislators. He is not. however, the only worrying eccentric who no longer has a voice in the details of applying the demands of British capitalism to the working class. Olga Maitland, who bit the dust at Sutton and Cheam. was once considered the doyenne of gossip columnists; she was unwise enough to debate with the Socialist Party and unintentionally had the audience rolling in the aisles by ranting about something called “Tommy grit”. Marcus Fox lorded it as chairman of the 1922 Committee and did his best to convince us that he was not a real person but a character from one of J. B. Priestley's more mordant accounts of past life in small Yorkshire towns. William Waldegrave, ex-Etonian and Fellow of All Souls, was deeply involved in the Arms-to-Iraq scandal and the question of whether lies had been told to Parliament about it and whether the prosecution of the Churchill Matrix management quite fitted in with what brainy, wealthy aristocrats should regard as unwavering British justice. And Waldegrave never really answered the questions, except with carefully crafted evasions.

Carnival

On 2 May there was a strange, almost carnival atmosphere about. People were actually celebrating the election of a Labour government, as if getting rid of people like Evans and Dicks was going to make capitalism an easier, more humane society. There is no evidence in the records of past Labour governments to encourage such optimism. There have been corrupt, eccentric and extremist politicians in the past as well as more rational and so-called moderate ones. It is no time to hate our leaders nor to love them but to hate capitalism and all it does to human beings and to trust ourselves to do what is needed to end it all. 

Ivan

. . . and the food's not too good, either (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent outbreaks of salmonella and listeriosis have focussed attention on the rising incidence of food poisoning in Britain in the last few years. There have also been outbreaks of food poisoning from other organisms; campylobacter has increased threefold and rotavirus has increased fivefold in the last eight years. Both of these organisms cause diarrhoea and vomiting, and the increase is probably due to “changes in agricultural practice or changes in the commercial preparation of food" (The Independent, 23 January 1989). These changes are the result of trying to make maximum profits regardless of the risk to consumers' health.

Salmonella

The Communicable Disease Report compiled by the Public Health Laboratory stated that there were 24,123 cases of salmonella enteriditis poisoning in 1988 and 12,533 cases of salmonella enteriditis phage type 4. Salmonella infections have doubled in the last two years and 80 to 90 per cent are found to be associated with chickens and eggs (Ibid.). It is significant that this dossier is not available to the public because the state in its role as facilitator of capital regards commercial secrecy as more important than providing the public with the knowledge to avoid the risks associated with food poisoning.

It was Edwina Currie's claim that most of the egg industry was infected with salmonella that alerted the public, and led to her losing her Junior Health Minister's post for offending the powerful agricultural lobby. Further evidence of the government’s concern to protect the egg industry's profits rather than public health was demonstrated by the much publicised leaked document received by Robin Cook, Labour Party health spokesman, which showed that representatives from the Department of Health had met with the egg producers and agreed not to issue a notice that “salmonella-poisoning at two hospitals appeared to have been caused by raw eggs. It was generally better if the announcement came from the company or trade body concerned" (Morning Star, 10 February 1989).

The use of antibiotics to help animals gain weight has resulted from the European Economic Community's ban on the use of hormones in meat, since 1 January 1988, because of the risk to human health. Previously, hormones fed to cattle increased profits by putting up to an extra 100 pounds of weight on a carcass. It is thought that antibiotics also help animals to gain weight, possibly by eliminating sub-clinical infections which prevent them from gaining their optimal weight (Self Health, 20 September 1988). But the widespread use of antibiotics has led to the evolution of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, and a study by two doctors at the US Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that, compared with ordinary strains of salmonella, the death toll was 21 times higher in people infected, with resistant strains of salmonella.

A fund of £19 million was set aside by the British government to compensate the egg industry for loss of sales even though the sharp increase in salmonella poisoning has been caused by a blatant disregard for consumers' health in the way that poultry has been reared.

In fact egg sales fell by 10 to 15 per cent and only £482,000 compensation has been claimed by the egg industry (The Grocer, 21 January 1989). Of course there are no plans to compensate the relatives of those who have died or the thousands of people who have been made ill as a result of eating contaminated eggs.

Ironically, in these days when increasing numbers of people are more health-conscious of what they eat, free range eggs are more likely to cause salmonella infections according to Bill Reilly, chairman of the public health committee of the British Veterinary Association:

The big advantage of the battery system is that the egg is laid on the wire ann rolls away immediately. A free range hen may lay the egg anywhere, and faecal contamination is more likely. (British Medical Journal, 28 January 1989 )

Listeria

Listeriosis, although less common than salmonella, with 683 reported cases since 1986 and 39 deaths in 1986 and 1987 is potentially more dangerous and, because of the continuing increase in “cook-chill” methods of preparing food, likely to be seen more frequently in the future.

Listeriosis takes between five days and five weeks to develop and it is difficult to trace the source of infection. The symptoms of the disease can resemble influenza, and listeriosis may not be suspected. The disease is particularly associated with miscarriages and stillbirths, and may also cause meningitis and septicaemia in the elderly.

A study carried out by Richard Lacey, professor of clinical microbiology at Leeds University found that a quarter of a test sample of cook-chill meals bought from leading supermarkets contained the bacteria (The Grocer, 14 January 1989). But. in addition to the health risk to the public, there has been an increasing use of cook-chill methods in hospitals since its introduction in the National Health Service in 1980 and there are now 157,000 meals a day produced by 40 centres.

Hospital cooking

Birmingham's Dudley Road Hospital has one of the largest cook-chill operations in the NHS with £1.8 million purpose built food production centre (Nursing Times, 18 January 1989). The introduction of this centre led to the workforce being reduced by one-third as it took over the work previously carried out by 14 kitchen: an attractive proposition for a government intent on reducing NHS costs and creating the potential for commercial use in the future.

The centralisation of hospital catering and the construction of large district general hospitals during the last two decades has caused problems in delivering cooked food to hospital patients. The Institution of Environmental Health Officers' (Hospital and Therapeutic Kitchens Inspection Guidelines and Reporting Format, 1988, states:

The movement of prepared food within hospitals, often over considerable distances. can create many problems with temperature control. In order to be safe the internal temperature of any heated trolley or container should be raised to a minimum of 75 degrees Centigrade before any food is loaded. Food must never be allowed to fall below a temperature of 63 degrees Centigrade.

These guidelines, sensible though they may seem, are almost impossible to carry out, especially in the winter months in hospitals on large sites where food trolleys have to be transported outside to be delivered to separate ward blocks. And even when food is successfully kept hot, the prolonged "hot-holding" to which it is subjected impairs its nutritional value.

It is not surprising that some of the worst outbreaks of food poisoning during the last twenty years occurred in hospitals. It is an indictment of the quality of hospital food that some institutions looking after long-stay patients have had to provide vitamin supplements — especially vitamin C — to remedy the sub-clinical deficiencies caused by an institutional diet.

The majority of cases of food poisoning are not reported but non-attendance at work because of “diarrhoea and vomiting" has become more common in recent years. There has also been an unexplained increase in septicaemia in the elderly. The government's response has been to play down the risks and when this strategy failed John MacGregor, Minister of Agriculture, announced that there would be tough measures taken to ensure that food production is strictly monitored. But plans to extend cook-chill regulations, to make food storage safer in shops, have been suspended for 18 months because of differences between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Health.

Profits before food safety

The government has announced cuts of £25 million in research grants which will lead to 2,000 redundancies in scientific posts and severely restrict future research into food poisoning. Although the government expects the food industry to conduct its own research it is unlikely that it would benefit the consumer: experience in the drug industry has shown that research has been solely to make larger profits and is frequently against the consumer's interests.

There is undoubtedly dissatisfaction with the role the Ministry of Agriculture has played in its responsibility for food safety. However, calls to make the Ministry of Health responsible instead will only marginally improve matters because the state's function is to ensure the smooth running of capitalism and not the well-being of workers unless production is threatened.

In theory there are laws to protect the consumer, but when Sunblest bakeries were recently fined £200 plus £50 costs for selling a mouldy cake it was revealed that they'd had 146 previous convictions since 1983 (The Messenger, 20 January 1989). It is also possible to buy reject and out of date food for less than half price at London markets (Today, 20 February 1989).

In recent weeks mercury has been found in Sainsbury's butter; mineral oils, used to glaze children's sweets, have been found to cause liver damage: and tea bags, milk cartons and coffee filters have been contaminated with dioxin which can cause genetic defects and liver damage. Additionally, despite the efforts of pressure groups the number of additives used in food continues to rise. The basic problem is that food, like any other commodity, is produced solely for profit. Only the abolition of capitalism can ensure that it is completely safe for people to eat.

Carl Pinel

Running Commentary: Junk society (1988)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Junk society

It's not often that I find myself in half agreement with a lackey of capitalism, in this case Edwina Currie, junior Health Minister. When she made her headline-grabbing remarks that Northerners are more overweight than Southerners, eat too many crisps and drink too much. I could only concur with her. While aware that Southerners eat junk food too, Mrs Currie raised a question to which any socialist could have given her the answer: diet is related to economic circumstances.

Two years on medical "experts” have reached the same conclusion and are taking Mrs Currie to task for omitting this explanation from her previous comments. The Henley Centre's director of health. Mr Kreitzman. told a BUPA conference in Leeds that by the early part of the next century life expectancy in the South would be longer than in the North. "We are talking about four to five years, which is quite significant", he said. "Just as we are developing an economy with affluence and poverty living cheek by jowl, so it is the case with health" (Guardian, 2 June). Currie was also attacked by Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the Clinical Research Division of the Royal College of Practitioners, who said that she had failed to understand that a northern diet is based on a tradition of low wage levels and heavy manual work.

One explanation for the northern predilection for "comfort" food may be that offered by George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier:

 Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would rather starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less you feel inclined to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita; an unemployed man doesn't. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little "tasty".

As long as capitalism exists, if you have caviar tastes but a fish and chip budget then your choice of food will be restricted by the amount of money you get for selling your labour-power to a minority ruling class. If you really want to improve both your health and your happiness then abolish this junk system of society. Abolish capitalism.

Sheep’s brain

Tucked away on the back page of the Guardian of 7 June was a hundred and fifty word report headlined "Howe insists on the beneficence of the capitalist system". In a speech in the City of London the day before Sir Geoffrey Howe had defended the social responsibility of the capitalist economy by claiming that those acting in their own interest in the market were promoting an increase in others' well-being. (Those readers who haven’t at this point fallen off their seats, and are rolling about consumed with hollow laughter, read on.) Replying to recent criticism by the Church of England, Sir Geoffrey said. “Where people are able to respond to the signals of the market place, they are responding to the preferences of their citizens. In effect, in seeking to increase their own well being, they are often helping to promote an increase in other people’s well being." He concluded that the welfare state, by promoting rights rather than responsibilities, had undermined traditional obligations.

Assuming that all readers aren’t curled up on the floor at this point, screaming "Please, Sir Geoffrey, no more. Have you ever thought of auditioning for Bob Monkhouse's Opportunity Knocks?', let me remind you that Denis Healey compared being criticised by Howe to being savaged by a dead sheep. This is a mistake. One must never under-estimate the power and influence of a member of the executive of the modern state, the committee for managing the common affairs of the ruling class, no matter how inane or ineffectual he or she may appear to be.

Dave Coggan

Greasy Pole: Beware of Leaders (2017)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It can be a time for their widespread regret, if not mourning, when any of our political leaders reaches the end of their time of dominance and the exposure of their futile dishonesty, leaving them with little more than a badge signifying their removal from the scene. Like Neville Chamberlain in 1938 waving his little piece of paper from Hitler to the crowd at Heston Airport. Like Ted Heath and his Three-Day Week which would replace slump with prosperity. Like Theresa May and her snap general election which was going to sweep away the muddle of Nick Clegg and that Coalition along with hapless Ed Miliband. But also, less enduring, there was John Moore who ended his time as Baron Moore of Lower Marsh. Moore was once favoured by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with a rocket-like rise up the Greasy Pole to the heights of Secretary Of State for Health and Social Security, where he enforced such changes as to nominate him Mr Privatisation with all the implicit rewards.

Collapse

One response to this was from Ken Clarke, who during his time has occupied so many ministerial prominences – among them Health and Social Security – along with his preference for cigars, alcohol and jazz music. He assessed Moore as ‘bright and likeable…very popular with the press’ but someone who ‘…knew nothing about either health or social security and, as far as I could see, had no views on the subject. He was soon both overwhelmed and unnerved by the sheer scale of the problems he faced and the expectations he had to live up to’. Another Tory colleague compared him to ‘…a frightened rabbit mesmerised by oncoming headlights’. Except that Moore’s difficulties went rather deeper than that, for in November 1987 in the midst of the chaos of his life as a Cabinet Minister he was struck down by bacterial pneumonia. His desperation was such that his struggle to conceal his condition was undermined when he collapsed at a Cabinet meeting. He chose to be treated at a private hospital which at that time was charging thousands of pounds a day, but soon there was no alternative for Thatcher but to cut his Ministry in two and pass the portfolio for Health to Ken Clarke before, in 1989, sacking Moore from the Cabinet. In 1992 Moore gave it all up, standing down from Parliament to work his talents as Baron Moore of Lower Marsh in the House of Lords – which he attended only rarely – and to return to his former fields of profit gathering in banking and industry. 

Currie

Among the persistent critics of Moore in the Commons was Edwina Currie who at one time seemed to go out of her way to be one of Thatcher’s more unwise appointments. For example there was the occasion when, as a junior Minister for Health, she informed the nation that ‘…in the Winter it was the Northerners who, neglecting to keep warm, die of ignorance and chips’. In her younger days in Liverpool she had spent a lot of time adoring the Beatles in the Cavern Club before she became a rampant Tory through her time absorbing Economic History at the London School of Economics. She was elected to Parliament in 1983 for South Derbyshire, by which time she had amassed a reputation as a ‘virtually permanent fixture on the nation’s TV screen saying something outrageous about just anything… the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation’ – an assessment suitable to her affair with the future Prime Minister John Major, which lasted some four years when he was a Party Whip hoping to be promoted through the ranks. But then it was Major who, after reaching the heights of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, felt it necessary to end the affair, leaving her distressed but not so much that she could resist accusing him of ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ and describing him as ‘one of the less competent Prime Ministers’ and later as ‘…too small minded in character, too small in intellect in the end’. And she did not consider it was the end of all affairs, asking herself, as she picked over the memories: ‘I daydream about another affair. Now, who might be interested?’

Broadmoor

One of Currie’s responsibilities in the Ministry of Health was a Task Force involved in running the Broadmoor Hospital, that nervously guarded and controlled institution where the most dangerous and unpredictable of offenders are confined after being medically certified as in need of restraint as well as treatment. Currie appointed Jimmy Saville to the Task Force, allowing him keys which made him free to roam the hospital with access to every part of it and mingle with the patients including those who were severely disturbed and heavily medicated. That was before the full facts emerged of Saville being himself a highly unstable character, but there was still good reason to act with caution in so threatening an environment. Among the other disturbing events which Currie was active in was as Health Minister in 1988 when she provoked the fury of the dairy farmers and milk sellers by announcing that most British eggs were contaminated with salmonella. As a result some four million hens were slaughtered with a huge financial loss to the producers which brought about Currie’s resignation as a Minister. The panic and anger did not die down for some years; in 2001 it was revealed that at the crucial time there was a severe epidemic of salmonella in the hens but by then Currie was well into her alternative professions as a TV performer, writer of romantic fiction and the like.

In the ideal (for the politicians) world there is often an assumption that when a leader drops out they leave a swathe of affectionately wistful memories. But all our experience of examples of this – Moore, Major, Currie –  emphasises it is not so because their period in power followed the established interests of the higher, owning, exploiting class. It is our part to rebuild world society so that it is freer, safer and humane.

Ivan

Change the Record (1995)

TV Review from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political programmes on TV are generally as brainless as the major political parties themselves. However, it must be an unenviable task to create a watchable and interesting TV experience with such a paucity of raw material. There are only so many times you can run items about Tony Blair and the Labour modernisation or the Euro-rift within the Conservative Party.

Despite this, TV producers seem to have been queuing up recently to make the politicians look interesting. One such attempt, House to House, Channel Four’s weekday lunchtime effort, is set in a large restaurant in London's Millbank to give it that extra air of seriousness (luncheon is, after all, where all the great political fixes are concocted and where gossip is fermented). The producers of this programme have got it sussed — it is always going to be much easier to entice MPs to the familiar surroundings of an eating-house round the corner from Westminster than it is to a sweaty studio on the other side of London.

As its title suggest, House to House concentrates on Parliamentary affairs and the legislative programme, and does so solidly and without imagination. It is serious stuff, though still slightly more exhilarating than watching Alan Titchmarsh on Pebble Mill at the same time on BBC I.

Rather more interesting, at least at first sight, is BBC2’s The Midnight Hour, an end-of-day political bun-fight which often gives the impression of being a rather ill-tempered editorial conference on one of the broadsheets. This is partly because its hosts tend to be rather bad-tempered journalists and press people (notably Bernard Ingham and Andrew Neil) and partly because the guests are required to take their jackets off before being seated at the debating table. Roy Hattersley has commented after his first appearance that this boded ill from the start, and has since claimed that The Midnight Hour is the worst political TV programme he's ever had the misfortune to appear on. He is probably being rather harsh. Regular viewers of this programme — if it has any — will have noticed a splendid back-projection of a marine fish tank in one corner of the room. The fish tank might not be quite as colourful as Bernard Ingham's braces, but one suspects that the fish perform a rather more useful function at this time of the day than the braces' owner has at any stage in his particular career.

A load of ecus

One of the longest-running political programmes is BBCI’s Sunday On the Record, now hosted by John Humphreys. Its former host, Jonathan Dimbleby, hot-foot from his successful toadying to Prince Charles, has swopped sides to take over from Brian Walden for ITV. On 29 January On the Record decided to hit back at Dimbleby with an action-packed, hyper-charged edition on the European Single Currency. Well, at least they made a better fist of it than they normally do.

The theme was that it was 1996 and some of the European Union states had decided to go ahead with a single currency. Britain was to have a referendum, with two opposing cross-party campaigns vying for the attention and support of the populace. In the Yes camp were those two intellectual giants of the TV age, Roy Hattersley (again) and Edwina Currie. Opposing them were the Tory Euro- sceptic Iain Duncan-Smith — a protege of the Chingford skinhead Norman Tebbitt — and veteran Labour Keynesian Peter Shore. Their objective, pursued via Party political-style broadcasts made with the help of advertising agencies and then via some cross-questioning of the teams, was to convince an evenly-split audience of the efficacy of their case. Not surprisingly, the No campaign won handsomely. This was not principally because of the latent nationalistic tendencies of the audience, though this may have played a small part, but because of the total and transparent economic illiteracy of Hattersley and Currie.

The entire exercise demonstrated something socialists have known for years — it is far easier to knock down proposals for running capitalism than build up new ones. Without doubt, the Euro-sceptics were able to effectively demolish the argument that a single European currency — if it is possible — would be an economic panacea. The Yes camp responded with an appeal to transcend narrow nationalism, their most positive argument of all, but with an electorate that largely votes with its wallet in mind, this cut little ice next to woeful tales of the ERM disaster, impossible convergence criteria and the enormously wasteful Common Agricultural Policy. It was simply a case of one group of reformists being outmanoeuvred by another set, largely because the proposals of the Euro-sceptics themselves were not under any real scrutiny.

So On the Record has done something useful at last, short of having socialists on. The latest reformist panacea for capitalism, when put to the test, was found wanting. Hattersley. Currie and their ilk were debunked.

Of more than passing interest was that the programme also showed up the deep division between the capitalist class and its representatives on such a central political issue. All the major newspapers produced a dummy-run edition for the programme with their views on a single currency, and they were divided too. The Sun and the Times were against, the Daily Mirror and the Independent for. The Guardian, under its forward-looking new editorial team, couldn’t make its mind up. So the capitalist class and its leading thinkers continue to dither when faced with the non-alternatives, and well they might.

Having convinced an audience that genuine political and economic unity is a pipe-dream so long as we are stuck with the anarchic and class-riven capitalist economy, perhaps On the Record can go one step further next time and demonstrate the absurdities propounded by the Euro-sceptic supporters of capitalism too. The nonsense emanating from both sides will then have cancelled itself out. preparing the way for socialists to put the genuine alternative. Now that really would be worth watching, and might even stir the fish on BBC2.

Dave Perrin

Editors' note: The fish, as well as the viewers, remained unstirred by The Midnight Hour and it has since been axed.

They said it . . . in 1987 (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

January

• Britain is no more equal a society today than it was a hundred years ago. (Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party)
• The technical possibilities for increasing safety are almost limitless. But safety is normally expensive. (Guardian summary of the Layfield Report on the Sizewell B reactor)
• I have to accept that I may well be used by god in this way. (James Anderton, Greater Manchester Chief Constable)
• Civilisation is in peril of we do not tackle homelessness. (Lord Scarman, launching International Year of Shelter for the Homeless)

February

• I'm not upset by being tapped, but I don't like inept tapping. (John Golding, General Secretary of the National Communications Union, on his phone being tapped during the British Telecom engineers' strike)
• We have a higher standard of living now than this country has ever known. (Margaret Thatcher)

March

• I made a lot of money. (Michael Heseltine, in interview with Terry Coleman)
• A television interview is no place for original thought. (Alan Watson, Liberal candidate for Richmond on Thames)
• One third of the nation is ill-fed, ill clothed and ill-housed. (Ian Wrigglesworth, SDP MP)
• We are in business to make money. (Merrick Roocroft, British Rail Area Manager)
• As a market researcher, I've been trained to meet all arguments with a bland smile. (Rosie Barnes, SDP MP)

April

• I am amazingly tired. (Taunea Tagaki, Neiwado Trading Company, after paying nearly £2 million for a diamond ring once owned by the late Duchess of Windsor)
• I think I have spent some £2 million but if it is much more that's a problem for my bank manager. (Sam Moussaieff, who spent nearly £6 million at the Windsor auction)
• It's a marvellous way of getting to know people. (Prince Charles, on working on a building site)
• We are all capitalists. The only difference is that for you it's the state that invests, while for us it's private individuals. (Thatcher to Gorbachev)
• There is something in it for everybody. (Gary Hart, on his abortive election programme)

May

• You can't go too far to catch votes. (Denis Healey)
• Islington is like a walled city. The issues here are housing, housing and housing. (George Cunningham, SDP candidate, Islington South and Finsbury)
• I'm Labour. I'm just am. (Girl in a pub, talking to New Society)

June

• When we had a Labour government last time . . . they had to slash public expenditure left, right and centre. (Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer)
• In my lifetime your party had a go at it four times and made a fuck-up each time. (Willesden 'bus worker to Ken Livingstone, Labour candidate, Brent)
• There is no activity, no idea, superior to that of securing victory at the next election. (Neil Kinnock)

July

• Nearly everybody enjoys it. It's a pretty useful job. You get to work with nuclear missiles. You get to work with the most sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile in the world. It's accurate and it works first time every time. I've been working with missiles for 12 years and I've enjoyed it. It's a lot of fun. (Major General Fisk, US Air Force at the Cheyenne nuclear missile base)
• I didn't trust the Liberal Party at all. (David Owen)
• I thought we had freedom of the press in this country. (Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson, judge at a Spycatcher hearing)
• A low profile is not my style. (Edwina Currie)

August

• Money is the cog that keeps the wheel of life turning. (Midland Bank brochure)
• If you can do this job and come out of it with your playing intact, your health intact and a little dignity - it's a minor miracle. (Michael Davis, leader of the London Symphony Orchestra)

September

• We are seeing in our cities, the growth of new slums which defy public health regulations, fire regulations, safety regulations. (Lord Scarman)
• Actually I felt as if I was dead. (Clement Freud, on losing his parliamentary seat at the general election)
• There is some opposition to thought in the Conservative Party. (Alfred Sherman, former political advisor to Thatcher)
• If we're not going down the yuppie path, I don't know where we are going. (Dennis Skinner, Labour MP on his party's "review" of policy after the election)
• The police service responds to situations. It doesn't create them. (Chief Superintendent David Ibbs, Wolverhampton police)

October

• It's a nice clean job. (Father of a fitter at Sellafield nuclear power plant)
• We're making so much money we don't give a damn what they are saying about us. (Director of a merchant bank)
• He does not talk to the press. (Aide to Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of the Sun newspaper)
• It's like Holloway prison. (Labour MP Dawn Primarolo on the House of Commons) 

November

• I like looking at gardens but I don't actually get down on my knees and plant things myself. (Lady Rothermere)
• They are using antiquated methods and putting safety at risk in the interest of profit. (Robert Adley, Tory MP on overloading on Sealink cross-Channel ferries)
• What does (Prince) Andrew actually do? (Tory MP)
• It's like working for an advertising agency but only promoting one product. (Country vicar, on his job)
• After all the money was given last time, after all the personnel and equipment that was put into Ethiopia, after the establishment of effective early-warning systems - after all this, why are things no better? (Bob Geldof on another outbreak of famine in Ethiopia)

December

• Some 90 per cent of the population should hear the sirens which will warn of an impending nuclear attack. (Written reply by Douglas Hogg, Home Office Minister)
• Unfortunately, the babies don't realise how important budgets are and they keep on being born. (ITV News At Ten, on the hospital cuts)
• Things are getting worse. People are suffering or dying while waiting for operations. (Consultant surgeon - Bristol Royal Infirmary)

Between the Lines: Currie and chips (1986)

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

Currie and chips

Perhaps, on the basis that if the government will not last forever it might as well go by suicide, Margaret Thatcher gave a ministerial post to the unacceptable face of medievalism, Edwina Currie. No sooner was Currie installed behind her new desk than she was throwing out insults to the impoverished of the North about how their bad health conditions were all down to too much booze, too many fags and excessive amounts of fast-food. (Evidently nobody has told Currie that capitalists investing in those products are among the biggest donators of funds to the Tory party). World In Action (ITV Monday. 6 October. 8.30pm) set out to go for the Edwinian jugular, which in her case meant sticking a microphone in front of her and letting her show her extensive capacity for insensitive stupidity. Currie's final comment that (paraphrased) if workers spend their money on unhealthy food and drink it will be their own fault if they die early is just the sort of talk which puts the lie to the myth of "caring capitalism". But the programme's method of trying to demonstrate that workers in the North are more poor than the luckier ones in the South was misleading and can only create further confusion about how to rid society of poverty.

The evidence used was a comparison between some of the poorest areas of Newcastle and a poor district in South East London. It was shown that workers tend to die earlier in the first area and that this is due to an inescapable cycle of poverty which is especially prevalent in the North. Even if this is so (and there are numerous parts of the so-called prosperous South East which are ghettoes of extreme deprivation), what conclusion would it lead to? Put more money into health care in the North? Reformists may argue for this, but within capitalism this may simply create new, worse problems for areas from which the NHS funding will be taken.

Ironically, one of the reasons for particular problems in the NHS in London is precisely a result of a central government policy to divert London NHS funding to other areas. Like the documentaries which seek to demonstrate that the real poverty is in the Third World, this programme serves only to fragment the analysis of poverty and to miss the point that deprived workers in Africa or Newcastle or Surrey are impoverished because it is profitable to let them be. That point was never made to Edwina Currie, thus allowing her to skate around the real issues, albeit on ice so thin that one hoped she was wearing her thermal underwear.

Paradise postponed

This is not a literary column but it so happens that 1 have always regarded John Mortimer as a much over-rated playwright. His current epic series (BBC2. Saturdays. 9.30pm) called Paradise Postponed is one of those tedious scripts full of apparently witty comments which leave the viewer thinking, How come I don't go around all day making witty comments and receiving them from other people? The thesis of the drama (beware of dramas bearing theses) is that after 1945 everyone expected the new government and the welfare state to create something approaching paradise, but it all failed because there are not enough idealists around.

I do not know whether John Mortimer, who spent most of the period concerned operating in the lie-courts as a barrister, sees himself as one of the few idealists but it is evident that he is a Labourite who like so many others is now playing out his disappointment that it all ended up just as The Socialist Party always said it would end up. No, the welfare state and the other crumbs lobbed towards the proletarian voting fodder have not created paradise or anything like it. In this drama Mortimer calls on us to mourn with him over the passing of this dream: maybe he will get some agreement from the reformists who see nothing but defeatism and the postponement of any real social change as inevitable but socialists did not share in the illusion in the first place and will not share in any theatrical shedding of tears over the televised burial of Labour's sterile ideals

A puzzler for Mr Dimbleby

Your reviewer dutifully watched most of the conferences on TV and contemplated the joke which asks, how can you tell when politicians are telling lies? Answer: when their lips are moving. But I have a problem for David Dimbleby and his buddies at the BBC. Let us imagine for a moment that they began to take democracy seriously and decided to cover the conferences of all political parties, even the little parties who do not spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on such events.

So they are given the job of commentating on the conference of The Socialist Party. What would they do? Firstly, there are no socialist leaders. So there is no big speech from some pompous windbag designed to rally the faithful, no polls which can be taken to find out whether our leader is more or less, or as popular with over-85-year-old widowers than David Owen or Neil Kinnock. And with no leaders there can be no leadership splits. So all the Dimblebyesque interviews, so common with capitalist parties' conferences, about what wets think of dries and rights of lefts and cuddlies of hards (this is quite aside from Playschool, you understand?) would be redundant.

Secondly, our conferences are very democratic. So the TV merchants would not be able to hang around outside smoke-filled hotel rooms at midnight to find out whether the Milton Keynes delegation is going to give its block vote to the Dundee amendment about how big the print should be in The Socialist Standard. Thirdly, in The Socialist Party we have no secrets. Now, it is well known that journalists love snooping around looking for secrets to uncover. They poke around looking for copies of private letters between supposedly important correspondents.

In this party the only subject we would wish to discuss with the media are the principles and policy of The Socialist Party. The discussion of ideas — that will be a novelty act for Robin Day. We are not expecting the TV cameras at our next annual conference (the 83rd) and nor do we expect the capitalist media to conduct our propaganda for us. But when enough workers — the people who do not control the media — see the urgency of the socialist proposition we have no doubt that the experts in distortion will be losing no time in working out ways to spread disinformation about this party.

Steve Coleman

They said it in 89 (1990)

From the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

JANUARY

• The industry has been drawn by commercial motives to reduce the crew on flights, with two pilots and sometimes no engineers. It’s a headlong pursuit of commercial gain at the expense of passenger safety—Terry Middleton, International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations, on the British Midland crash.
• I am a great attender of second-hand sales for charities in my constituency. You can get very good bargains—Peter Lloyd, Under Secretary for Social Security.
• Twenty years after the war on poverty was abandoned, this crippler of human potential again stalks the nation . . .  over half a million of our children are homeless, living in alleyways and anguish, eating out of dumpsters and selling their bodies to stay alive in an underworld of fear and exploitation—Mary Futrell. President of the USA National Education Association.
• There will always be the needy and distressed, but not in large numbers—Baroness Phillips. Chair, Association for the Prevention of Theft in Shops.
• I have learned not to talk to the press— Edwina Currie.
• All is fair in love, war and parliamentary politics—John Smith. Labour Shadow Chancellor.
• We must learn to avoid crises, since we cannot depend on our ability to manage them once they develop—Robert McNamara. US Secretary of Defence under Kennedy.

FEBRUARY

• Does God care whether England has a goal-scoring striker?—Bishop of Liverpool.
• I'm an Australian. I believe in equality— Rupert Murdoch.
• Many people cannot get money from banks and with the money they would get from selling a kidney they can start a new life—Count Rainer Rene Adellmann. a trader in kidney transplants.
• It's a shame, really, that people feel it necessary to criticise the Thatcher government after ten years' Conservative rule— Roseanne Serelli, Young Conservative
• How can we escape the logical conclusion of the market-place that for the elderly and the chronically sick the most economic solution is death—Dr Iona Heath North London GP
• It's just called "The Bible" now—we dropped the word “Holy" to give it more mass market appeal—Judith Young, publishers Hodder and Stoughton.
• I am a socialist, I always will be—David Owen.
• Since I became a Christian. I have got a much bigger house and three cars. Isn't God wonderful? Praise the lord!—American TV evangelist.

MARCH

• Space is almost infinite. In fact it is infinite. There's a lot of uncharted water in space—US Vice-President Dan Quayle.
• I think we have attacked the Royal Family too much. We could destroy the social fabric—Lord Stevens. Chairman, United Newspapers.
• We, as professionals, said it was just too bad that we lost the Belgrano—Rear-Admiral Gualto Allara. commander of the Argentinian sea forces, Falklands War.
• From my knowledge of South Africa, it is made up of many and varied peoples— Margaret Thatcher.
• She's the most marketable leader ever—Peter Fluck, Spitting Image, on Thatcher.
• It can't get any worse. When it rains here we put buckets in the corridors. This is a big. dirty hospital we can't afford to clean. The food is poor, the laundry is rotten. We work enormously hard only to be told "cut down, we can't afford you "—Robert Johnson, consultant surgeon, Royal Infirmary. Manchester.
• I have done nothing wrong. I don't know why people are after me—Pamella Bordes.

APRIL

• I've never had a job in my life—Rob Walker, of the Johnny Walker whisky family.
• The new development is going to bring a lot of employment to the local community. Think of all the cleaning ladies that are going to be needed—Estate agent. Docklands.
• After I met working men, I became a totally and completely changed person. These men from the Gorbals impressed me. because they were prepared to fight and die for British society and what had it done for them? It had done a great deal for people like me. but what had it done for them?—Lord Whitelaw.
• The wages of sin is increased circulation—Lord Ardwick, ex-newspaper editor, on the press.
• We are only now beginning to use the techniques Hitler was using 50 years ago—Harvey Thomas, public relations consultant.
• These days a lot of people out here are mentally sick and should be hospitalised, but money is the factor that keeps them here. If you have money, no matter how mad you are. you could be in a good place—Joseph, one of London's homeless.
• I see things in black and white—Terry Dicks. Tory MP.

MAY

• It's difficult to get a lot of pleasure out of material things—Property millionaire Stuart Goldenberg.
• I am a glutton for punishment—Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor.
• What about the poor, what about the oppressed? Well, if you carry on like that, we will always have them—Bob Payton, millionnaire "Pizza King ".
• In a bad week, we pay the bills or we buy food. We always try to meet the bills first, then we see what is left—Norman Goodwin, Social Security claimant.
• Money does give you more choice in certain areas—Property millionaire Stuart Goldenberg.
• She was a Cordon Bleu cook and about to learn flower arranging—Andrew Neil on Pamella Bordes.

JUNE

• We want to be good citizens in countries where we invest—Sultan of Brunei, the world’s richest man.
• A third of the total budget goes on storing and moving the food surpluses. It's shameful when much of the world is going hungry—Michael McGowan, MEP for Leeds.
• This is more fascist rather fascism— Peking worker, on the massacre there.
• I may not even vote, for all the good they do. Politicians are all the same, aren't they?—Lilian Hurley, secretary of a residents' association in Lambeth.
• The more extreme a politician's views, the fewer actual points he tends to make in an argument—Professor Guy Cumberbatch.
• You know this committee talks rather like the Bank of England. When something fails, we say it has limited success— Nicholas Budgen, Tory MP, member of the Treasury Select Committee.
• You must be awfully busy— The Queen, to President Bush.

JULY

• Like other Old Etonians, his problem is that he's never had to argue with a woman before—Tam Dalyell on Paul Channon, then Minister of Transport.
• Airports are not very good at giving out information because information dissemination is not very profit-making—John Boyle chairman Tour Operators' Council
• For all supermarkets to reduce chill cabinet temperatures to 5°C would cost £250 million. It is unnecessary—Dr Richard Pugh, chief quality controller, Tesco Stores, on the listeria outbreak.
• A lot of our success in war is because we have this restrained aggression in us. and it comes out if we take too much alcohol—John Dore, British Consul for Benidorm on the Costa Brava, on British lager louts.
• We would rather have hooligans than empty beds—Pedro Terpault, President Costa del sol Hotel Owners' Association.
• Your strength is our strength. And your victory is our victory—Enoch Powell, to Russia.

AUGUST

• We were in a terrible mess at that time—Denis Healey on his spell as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• One's not surprised by anything in politics—Judy Steel. David Steel’s wife.
• What we really need is rain, sleet or snow until September so that the children go back to school with new shoes—Ian Ritchie, shoe manufacturers C & J Clark, on the hot summer.
• Lumps of sewage are not very pleasant aesthetically—Malcolm Gunton, Assistant Director of Environmental Health for Havant, on the state of Hayling Island's beaches.
• It is totally unacceptable to lie in advertisements but, like all industries, estate agents want to make their goods look as attractive as possible—Trevor Kent, President National Association of Estate Agents.
• I love it. It’s just like combat. It's the real thing—Wall Street investment broker on his job
• It’s just the scale that's different—Multi-millionaire Malcolm Forbes on his 70th birthday party, which cost him at least £l million.
• Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism. And we are setting out to do just that— Lech Walesa.
• Cricket is a business, not a sport: it's about balance sheets—Simon Hughes, Middlesex fast bowler.
• I know very little about apartheid—Mike Gatting, captain of the rebel cricket tour to South Africa.

SEPTEMBER

• You've got to be a bit like a cockcroach to run your own business—Professor Paul Burns.
• The company's not a charity. It's there to make a profit—Redundant BP worker.
• I suppose I spend around £100,000 a year on polo excluding the cost of the horses and they can cost anywhere from £500 to £15,000 each. I hope it doesn't get too expensive—Polo player Brod Munro-Wilson.
• Trade unions do not cause inflation, governments do—Tory MP Terry Dicks, on the ambulance crews' pay claim.
• My politics are those of bewilderment— John Cleese, on his switch from the SDP to the Green Party.
• How many times has there got to be appalling accidents at sea before companies stop putting commercial considerations before safety?—Judge Jonathon Crabtree. Beverley Crown Court.
• I hope I never get so old I get religious— Ingmar Bergman.

OCTOBER

• It's a dialogue of the deaf and it's not good enough—Tom Sawyer, chairman of Labour Party Home Policy Committee, on their annual conference
• There is a huge financial investment in the cholesterol scare—Dr Michael De-Bakey, heart surgeon.
• Nobody will ever believe me but I have never been that interested in promoting myself—Edwina Currie.
• I can come to terms with the idea that my son might die because of his illness, but not because of a shortage of money— David McKenna, whose six-year old son had cancer treatment postponed because of a cash-caused shortage of beds at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.
• And remember fear and greed are the prime incentives—Peter Wheeler of Corporate Charisma, a company advising MPs on their TV image.

NOVEMBER

• Shabby suits, sweaty faces and dated hairstyles could cost some MPs their seats at the next general election—Letter to MPs from TV image consultants.
• Women, with certain exceptions, have little to offer the House of Commons—Tory MP John Carlisle.
• Its not very encouraging, is it, to know that one of your neighbours is on the dole and from a foreign country?—Yee-Chong, Docklands resident, on local council tenants.
• A decade ago Mrs Thatcher said she was going to transform my life, and by golly she has. I have dreams of getting my hands round her throat—Mary Martin, widow and lifelong Tory voter.
• You can't just turn up and join, like the local Conservative Association, you know—Ray Dinnis, huntsman, on membership of the Hunt.

DECEMBER

• If Dickens came back he would be quite shocked. He would think: "This has a nasty familiar ring about it. I remember things like this"—Brian Redhead, on Crisis at Christmas.
• Why can our children not be taught about England's heroes, instead of vague subjects like social trends?—Tory MP John Stokes.
• I love spending money and it's nice to have restraints and constraints—Olga Polizzi, millionairess daughter of Charles Forte, head of Trusthouse Forte.
• Policy is important yes. but these are things over which people's perceptions change with the state of the economy—Conservative backbencher.
• I think he's very lucky to get away with all English gentleman balls—Tory minister, on Anthony Meyer.
• This is a capitalist country after all—Paul McCartney.