Voice From The Back: Masters of deception (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Masters of deception

We are led to believe, by the media, that the men and women who make up the government are motivated by the highest moral standards of honesty and decency. So what are we to make of Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat who wrote the following essay published by The Foreign Policy Centre and reported in the Observer (7 April)? “The postmodern world has to start to get used to double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern world continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.”

State of the nation?

It is said that clear thinking leads to clear speaking. That clarity of thought is reflected in lucid communication. If that is so, what must the US President’s thought process be like? Here he is reported by Newsweek (22 April) as he tries to communicate something or other. Your guess is as good as ours as to what he is on about: “And so, in my State of the – my State of the Union – or state – my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation – I asked Americans to give 4,000 years – 4,000 hours over the next – the rest of your life – of service to America.” Eh?.

Arms and hypocrisy

The journalist Alex Bell recently gave an update on the British arms trade in the Herald (6 May): “One of those statistics that lodges in the mind and rarely gets revised is the one about Britain being the third largest exporter of arms in the world. Time to update it, as we’re the second largest. In the last twenty years our arms industry has grown by a factor of 10. According to the Institute for Strategic Studies, revenues from the arms trade were more than $5 billion in 2000, or twice as much as France and Germany combined. They were around $500m in the mid-1970s . . . Don’t forget that just as Tony Blair was trying to calm the border dispute in January between Pakistan and India, he was in Delhi trying to flog jets.” So what happened to that much vaunted “ethical foreign policy”?

The childhood destroyer

Capitalism has only one drive – make profits. In that ruthless drive the planet is poisoned by pollution, the rivers and lakes are turned into sewers and human life is stunted, broken and destroyed. Perhaps the greatest indictment of this Frankenstein society is the way it treats the old, the disabled and the most vulnerable group of all the world’s children: “One child in eight has to do work that could harm them physically or mentally, the UN labour agency claimed. Some 246 million children are in unacceptable forms of child labour, with 179 million in hazardous mining, fishing and construction, says the ILO, but 8.4 million children are caught up in slavery, trafficking, forced recruitment for battle, prostitution, and pornography.” Herald (7 May)

Tory braveheart

The Scottish Parliament over the years has illustrated that it can be just as silly as Westminster when dealing with social problems. In a country that has all the usual features of capitalism – poverty, drug addiction and homelessness all this backwoodsman Tory could proffer to the parliament’s deliberations was the following piece of nonsense: “A Tory MSP has lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament, calling for William Wallace to be officially recognised as a “patriot” before the 700th anniversary of his death in August 1305. Phil Gallie, the Tory constitutional affairs spokesman, said the anniversary of Wallace’s death was an opportunity to ‘right wrong’.” Times (9 May)

God and mammon

According to a recent Church of Scotland report they are losing 17,000 punters a year and, unless this trend is dealt with, they could cease to exist by 2050. So concerned are they about the potential drop in income that the Moderator commissioned a journalist to produce a book entitled Outside Verdict; An Old Kirk in a New Scotland. The author proposes tithing members’ salaries and flogging off manses and overseas churches:. The book states: “There are too many people in the kirk who refuse to think of it as a business, who think that because this money is being used for God’s work, contemporary business practice need not apply.” Sunday Times (12 May). But isn’t it also the business of the Church to tell gullible workers on a Sunday morning not to thirst after the material things of this world, to be content with their lot and look for their reward in the next world?

Material World: Campaigners for humanitarian intervention: “useful idiots” of militarism (2008)

The Material World column from the August 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing new in governments claiming to be motivated by humanitarian concerns when they go to war. To take a couple of old examples: tsarist Russia supposedly fought the Ottoman Empire in order to rescue Armenians from massacre by the Turks, while British intervention following the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 was justified by lurid drawings of “Huns” skewering babies on their bayonets (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWatrocities.htm). The enemy atrocities might be real, as in the first example, or imaginary, as in the second, but in both cases the claim of humanitarian motivation was fraudulent. Governments decided for or against war on the basis of (sometimes erroneous) calculations of economic and strategic interest.

That remains true today. Never, however, has it been more important for governments to win public support for wars by claiming humanitarian motives. As in the past, some of the “facts” underlying the claims are fabricated. Thus, Tony Blair repeatedly claimed that 400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves, although the number of corpses uncovered was only 5,000.

But again, the claims are false even when the facts are true. Often this is obvious because the atrocity occurred long before foreign governments expressed any outrage over it. Why bring the matter up just now? Britain and the US had no objection when Saddam used poison gas on Kurdish villages in 1988 because at that time he was their ally. The weeks preceding the dispatch of British troops to Afghanistan were marked by a media campaign against the oppression of women in that country, with even Cherie Blair roped in. The issue was then dropped as suddenly as it was raised.

A public movement for humanitarian intervention

What is new is the emergence, within the broader human rights movement, of a loosely organized network that campaigns for military intervention wherever that seems to be the only effective means of halting or preventing genocidal atrocities against some ethnic group. Currently, for example, there is an international campaign for intervention in Darfur (Sudan).

During my non-socialist period, I was involved for a while in one of the organizations that makes up this network: the Institute for the Study of Genocide (ISG). My research, publicized through the ISG, helped to bring the massacres of Bosnian Moslems by Serb militias to the attention of the US media and politicians – including, notably, Bill Clinton, who at that time was campaigning for president. Later Clinton did intervene militarily in Yugoslavia, though over Kosovo rather than Bosnia.

Unlike governments, anti-genocide activists like the ISG have quite genuine humanitarian motives. They recall how “the world sat by” and allowed the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to proceed. (Though at war with Nazi Germany, the Allied command turned down pleas to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz.) They are determined to establish humanitarian considerations as an integral part of policy making, so that “we” will not let such terrible things happen again.

Any decent person will sympathize with this line of thought. But there is a problem with it. Let us shift our focus from the moral imperative of effective action to the political forces capable of such action. Who is “the world”? Who is “we”? The only “we” capable of intervening is governments with their armed forces. But governments do not exist for humanitarian purposes. They are therefore loathe to intervene for humanitarian reasons, and it is close to impossible to compel them to do so.

Pros and cons

From the point of view of governments, the existence of a public movement for humanitarian intervention has both pros and cons. It is irritating and embarrassing to have to face down emotional public demands to intervene in places where no important “national interests” are at stake – in Rwanda, for instance, or Darfur. On the other hand, when you are inclined to intervene anyway for other, more “important” reasons it is extremely convenient to have a public movement pressing for intervention. That makes it much easier to drum up public support for war, and at the same time you can enhance your democratic credentials by “responding to public opinion.”

In the case of Yugoslavia, the demand to intervene effectively over Bosnia was resisted, but the campaign in which I participated prepared the ground for intervention over Kosovo. The evidence now available suggests that in Kosovo, in contrast to Bosnia, there was never any real danger of genocide (as opposed to the usual ethnic cleansing). In Kosovo, however, and again in contrast to Bosnia, significant interests were at stake, such as a major oil pipeline and metal-mining complex (see April 2008 Socialist Standard).

Illusory success

It may appear to campaigners for humanitarian intervention that they have a certain limited success. They “win some and lose some.” But if we look more deeply into the real interests involved we see that their success is largely illusory. It is by no means clear that their efforts have the net effect of reducing the amount of suffering in the world. In fact, by supporting and helping to legitimize brutal and devastating wars they may well increase the total of suffering.

The epithet “useful idiots” (or “useful fools”) was used to pillory Western pacifists who supposedly served the interests of the Soviet Union, though without intending to do so and for the best of all possible motives. Jean Bricmont borrows the expression for a different purpose, calling campaigners for humanitarian intervention the “useful idiots” of Western militarism and imperialism (Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2006). Again, this is not meant to cast any aspersions on their motives.

As socialists we would only question the stress on “Western.” In principle such people could equally well serve as useful idiots for non-Western (Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc.) militarism and imperialism, though in practice they are active mostly in Western countries.

Calls for humanitarian intervention only make sense in terms of a false conception of the nature and functions of government. They feed a delusion that obscures the reality of our capitalist world, thereby making it harder to overcome that reality.

Stefan

Voice From The Back: Hard Times (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard Times 

Capitalism treats everything as a business. The Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough is a good example. Chief executive of the new ú46 million academy Alan McMurdo makes his aims plain. He will have no playground and insists that the school will be a business concern. “Dr McMurdo … says that he wants to run his school like a business, treating pupils as employees. Lunch will be incorporated into the third lesson of the day, when students will be escorted to the refectory and given 30 minutes to eat before returning directly to the classroom. … ‘It’s all about the investment of public money,’ he said.” (Times, 14 May) Charles Dickens’s tyrannical school teacher Gradgrind looks positively benevolent compared to McMurdo.

Moral Majority nonsense

The death of Jerry Falwell, the founder of Moral Majority Inc. marks the end of an obnoxious combination of rightwing politics, homophobia, racialism and US nationalism. In the 1980s he had a 21 million TV viewing audience and a church that was enjoying an income of £45 million a year. “While MMI was avowedly bipartisan, he claimed that Democrats were a ‘dangerous minority of homosexuals, feminists, socialists and freezeniks’. He said that anyone who was anti-Israel was anti-God, but later added that the Antichrist was Jewish, and that Jews, like Roman Catholics, had no place in heaven.” (Times, 16 May) His life is a sad commentary on the gullibility of many American workers. Eventually his MMI ended in financial bankruptcy to match its intellectual bankruptcy.

USA, fantasy and reality 

“At least 10 of the Republicans and Democrats hoping to run for U.S. president in the November 2008 election are millionaires, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Collectively, the candidates are worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars, the newspaper said. Republican Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and founder of a private equity firm, is the richest of the field with personal assets estimated by his campaign at $190 million to $250 million, the Post reported. …The Post noted a long history of the very wealthy becoming president, from Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.” (Yahoo News, 17, May) So much for the fantasy of “log cabin to White House”.

Merchants of Death

“The Government’s pledge ten years ago to act ethically and openly when licensing arms export sales has failed to eradicate corruption or stop weapons ending up in the wrong hands, a report says today.” (Times, 21 May) The report The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a Decade of Labour’s Arms Exports is produced by Saferworld and reports that Britain has consistently approved military exports to countries accused of violating human rights, including Colombia and Indonesia. They make peaceful electoral promises, but in power – business is business.

Let them suffer

“Sick children who have been taking part in trials for a drug that has transformed their lives now face the prospect of being denied the treatment because of NHS cost-cutting. Doctors have condemned the NHS for inflicting misery on children who have the painful rare blood disorder sickle cell anaemia. Some children have gone from the agonising routine of having their parents insert a needle into their stomach for eight to 12 hours a night at least five nights a week, to taking two Exjade tablets daily. The drug cleanses their blood of life-threatening excess iron – a side effect of the frequent blood transfusions needed to treat the disease.” (Observer, 3 June) 10,000 people in the UK suffer from this condition, so why the delay in supplying this drug? It costs £10,000-£15,000 for a year’s supply for a sufferer. Need any other explanation?

Capitalism distorts science 

Two separate items from the same day’s newspaper illustrate the harshness of capitalism. “Several men were arrested in an organ-smuggling inquiry in Jordan for allegedly luring poor people to sell their kidneys. More than 80 cases have been uncovered in recent months. Each kidney can sell for up to $2,000 (£1,000).” (Times, 5 June)

“Clinical trials that compare two similar drugs are significantly more likely to favour the one made by the company that pays for the work, according to a study that sheds new light on bias in medical research. …The work, by a team led by Lisa Bero, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, raises fresh concern about the influence of pharmaceutical companies over research.” (Times, 5 June)

Growing old disgracefully 

The journalist Mary Riddell paints a dire picture of what it is like to be old when you are poor. “Some of the 31,000 pensioners who died of cold-related illnesses in the last five winters would still be alive, but for enforced frugality. … In its Spotlight survey out this week Help the Aged will present a disturbing picture of worsening old age. According to its findings, 144,000 people never leave their homes, 21 per cent live in poverty and more than one in 10 is chronically lonely, a figure up significantly in the past year; 73 per cent of adults say older people face routine discrimination.” (Observer, 10 June) After a lifetime of work and exploitation, this is the fate of many workers inside capitalism.

World View: In whose interests? (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In late January, Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary and master of Orwellian double-speak, made another keynote speech, devoid this time of any reference to “ethical dimensions” to foreign policy and instead focused on the advancing of “British values” of freedom and democracy around the world in the “national interest”.

Although he made references to “common interests”, “international interests”, and “national identity”, as well as the token allusion to democracy and diplomacy, it was the rehashing of the term “national interest” that sickened all but the brainwashed.

Cook speaks of national interest as politicians have for the past century, as if it were something tangible, something that can be seen, something unquestionable. It is indeed a much bandied about term—and many are prepared to take it for granted—but what does it mean?

Well, for one thing, it’s not something the lay person ponders too much. After all, if the politicians think something is in our interests then it must be just that. They know best and if we didn’t trust them we wouldn’t have voted for them. This is, in fact, the kind of mind-set politicians count upon before they can come out with such drivel.

That politicians continue to use terms like national interest is evidence that they premise their speeches on the assumption that the average person on the street is an imbecile. Moreover, the term is so designed, and used, as to distort our perception of reality. From the cradle to the grave we are discouraged from asking significant and searching questions, the type that might embarrass our betters and superiors. We are nurtured to mistrust our own ideas, to respect the views of the clergy, teachers, parents, politicians, the royals and all manner of counsellors and advisers. Little wonder, then, that so many injustices prevail and that so many can speak in defence of the government line, unwittingly acquiescing in their own exploitation, all in the national interest. But this is how it is. So many are prepared to accept that the government embodies the people’s interests.

The national interest conjures up an image that we are all one happy family, all pulling and working together for the good of all, that we all have something to be proud of, to defend and to benefit from. It suggests an absence of strife and antagonism and that the real enemy is “out there”. We’re meant to feel good about the national interest, secure in the knowledge that the well informed are thinking on our behalf. It harks back to the “bulldog spirit” of the blitz years, when even the king and queen seemed half decent because they had been bombed (“Gawd bless ’em all, Guv.”).

In reality, the national interest is anything the master class and their executive, the Blairs and Chiracs and Clintons of this world, deem it to be at any given time, or rather anything that helps perpetuate their ideology and keeps them in power; anything that can undermine the potential for political action geared towards real change. The national interest is the paternalistic jargon of a profit-hungry elite, trying to rationalise in our eyes the lengths they will go to accrue more profits at our expense. It is used by politicians largely to secure support for a course of action they are finding difficult to promote. It is designed to block serious discussion of an issue—who’ll argue against the national interest?—and to marginalise opponents, thus stifling deeper understanding of issues.

Thus, the national interest is a Labour government contemplating the selling of arms to Indonesia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, the mobilisation of a Western coalition of 750,000 soldiers to tackle a third-world army of farmers in the Middle East. It is a government campaign urging us to shop our neighbours to the state’s protectors. It is an army of police wading into a picket line, truncheons swinging. It is the appointment of drug tsars and the teaching of the benefits of marriage to schoolchildren. The national interest is the Russian army in Chechnya, the USA in Vietnam, Israel’s airforce bombing Lebanon, and Uganda supporting Congolese rebels.

One thing is clear, while all the above can be pushed as national interests, none are in the interests of the working class. The interests of the majority—or the working class—are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist, class. True, we all have basic needs and desires. whichever class we belong to, but talk about shared interests in a two class society is nonsense. The capitalist class have one real interest—and let them deny it—to maximise their investment and to accrue more profit. How many people get hurt and trod on in the process is of no consequence. Neither is much consideration given to environmental concerns. The working class, on the other hand, own little more than our ability to labour, an ability we sell to the master class. Our interest under capitalism becomes getting the best price for our labour power. Indeed such is the onus on us to sell our labour power at as a high a price as possible that its consequences dominate every aspect of our lives.

It has to be remembered that the master class depend on our complacency for their continued survival. Our silence, our willingness to accept everything they say without question, is the victory they celebrate every day. Our job should therefore be to doubt and question everything they say. If we stand for nothing we fall for anything. For we do have interests. As a globally exploited class, denied so many of the benefits of civilisation in a world of potential abundance, it is in our interests, our real class interests, to help put a stop to their insane system, not just for the future of humanity, but for the future of our planet.

Our real class interests lie in establishing a global system of society, devoid of borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion, money, wages or salaries, a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to its fullest potential and the benefit of all.

John Bissett

The Moral Craze (1998)

From the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A miserable moral anxiety is in the air. The self-righteous are on the march. Wrong. Right. Good. Evil. Simplistic moral certainties blast from the megaphones of the media, as the high priests of Capital cast their judgements upon everything but the lousy system of class exploitation that keeps the vicars, the rabbis, the mullahs and assorted other bullies in business.

From presidential blow jobs to ex-murderers signing book deals, an obsession with the trivia of individual transgressions serves as a soap opera distraction from the pervasive atrocities of the system. How much easier it is to incite crowds of under-educated, aimless, embittered kids to riot in Bristol because a sex offender released from prison is sitting in a police cell thinking deranged thoughts than to attend to the malignant rationality of a social system which condemns millions of children to the fatal abuse of starving in a world of plenty.

We know what the Moors’ murderers did. We know where they are. We know that Evil is getting its due reward. And how easy it is to sit in perpetual anger, demonising their villainy. We are told their names and their crimes are repeated with regularity in a frenzy of tabloid outrage, as if these were the sole disrupters of an otherwise tranquil society. We do not see published the names of those decision-makers in the World Bank whose determination to cut aid here and finance dictators there has led to millions dwelling in poverty and perishing needlessly. There are no scowling mugshots of those men in suits from the IMF who enrich themselves upon the corpses of those who cannot be milked for profit. Where are the lurid tabloid accounts of the sordid merchants of death who jet from nation to nation attending arms fairs, exchanging millions of dollars for the latest weapons of murder, the most sophisticated torture equipment, the means of creating hell on earth? For such callous inhumanity they will be medalled, given knighthoods, made richer than the most violent of gangsters could hope to become. It is a highly selective morality that capitalism embraces.

Jack Straw, the man who shopped his own son to the police for possessing dope, appears in front of every camera that will recognise him. He is in a denouncing mood. He has been taking lessons from Michael Howard. He is Disgusted of New Labour, ready to write to his MP and demand that something is done when it occurs to him–I am an MP, so I can pursue my philistine rage in the name of justice. So the tabloid rags, with their naked models and naked lies, provide space for the Straw man to denounce the child killer who was paid money for helping to write a book about what, as a deranged child, had made her kill. Thatcher demands $25,000 a time to appear before worshipping Americans with her kiss-and-tell Falklands memories. The murdered conscript crew of the Belgrano is conveniently unmentioned either by Thatcher or the tabloid bog rolls. But Straw is not denouncing Thatcher. Neither is Blair. They are out to pick on an old woman who has written a book regretting that she had once committed a hideous offence. Is it the money that they begrudge her? Or the fact that she has dared to confuse the simplicity of witch-hunting by expressing remorse?

Sickening hypocrisy

How convenient these moral distractions are for those with an indefensible system to sustain. So, Robin Cook insists that he did not know–or forgot–or wasn’t as bad as the Tories had been if he did indeed know–that arms were being sold to mercenaries in Sierra Leone, even though international law forbade it. Call in the broadsheet detectives who will piece by piece, in the manner of a bad Agatha Christie novel, seek to unravel the story. There is a rather bigger story they will ignore, of course. Who are the regimes to which Mr Cook is quite happy and legally free to sell weapons of mass destruction? When last did the Foreign Office publish a list of those companies in Britain which make profits from selling torture equipment to dictators? And how big are those profits? And what precisely has happened to those upon whom they have been used? Can we expect a statement about that, Mr Cook? Perhaps the tortured and the bombed should be informed that these

British weapons have been sold in the name of an “ethical foreign policy”. A further twist of the knife. But Cook can rest easy in his bed, for the journalists are much more concerned about who he shares it with than how many lives he helps to ruin as head of one of the biggest arms-exporting nations in the world. Now, that’s what the public need to know: Was Robin Cook unfaithful to his wife? Will he be unfaithful to his new wife? And was Bill Clinton the innocent victim of a crazed young girl’s fantasy or was she the victim of a dirty old man’s fantasy? And what about OJ Simpson–and George Michael–and Michael Jackson–and on and on until a frenzy or moral anxiety scares everyone into trusting no-one, particularly themselves. Because when the majority are frightened and unconfident they trust the nearest bully who will tell them that his mob can keep the streets safe.

Law and Order.

We have always known that Labour and Tories support the same system. The current fashion for shocked or amused realisation that Blair is to Major what Major was to Blair is no postmodern irony–just what socialists have been saying for decades. But can even the most hardened of scientific socialists be permitted just the merest morsel of surprise at the ease with which New Labour has taken to its very heart–or, more probably, its Christian soul–the indecently unforgiving, excessively punitive, uncouthly scapegoating rhetoric which seeks to monopolise virtue as a state asset while condoning every crime of capitalism as if it has nothing at all to do with them? The fine-tuned skills of sickening hypocrisy have exceeded all negative expectations.

The worst of this obsession with personal moral transgressions is its failure to see anti-social behaviour as anything but inner weakness: an inherent flaw. So the fault must be purged–isolated–tormented–anything but understood. And this is the right way for capitalism to respond. Because the alternative would be to go beyond the tabloid simplicities of crime and punishment and seek the cause of what makes killers kill and sex offenders offend and muggers mug. There is the Saudi Arabian response–of which New Labour’s toughness is a cowardly imitation–which refuses to ask questions. And if you cut off the hands of enough shoplifters and whip enough adulterers it will not be too long before the message is driven home and only the most persistent offenders need to be tortured, killed or incarcerated. Elegantly simple. The more complicated alternative of seeking causes is not that difficult. Most child sex abusers were themselves victims of child sex abuse. Most muggers are from families that are poor and uneducated rather than affluent and privileged. Many rapists have immersed themselves in commercially packaged porn, appealing to their disempowered craving for respect and power, before they rape women. In short, the behaviour of those we least like arises from specific social relationships. We cannot ignore or approve of the relationships and then indulge in orgies of moral indignation because they produce inevitable social effects.

Steve Coleman

Gulf Hypocrisy (1998)

From the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Saddam Hussein story is one that will dominate news reports for some time to come, as has indeed been the case since the Gulf War of 1991. Not least because the Gulf has been an issue the US—still anxious to find some hegemonic raison d’etre in the post-Cold War era—has been desperate to force as an international issue. And in place of the old “communist” menace, Saddam is as good a bogey man as the US can find to protect us from.

Few of us took President George Bush’s notions of a “New World Order” seriously after the events of 1989. If anything, the New World Order meant little more than that the US would seek every opportunity to maintain its dominant position in the world and, as was demonstrated in the Gulf in 1991, that the world was to be ruled by force and intimidation.

Saddam, who certainly replaced the USSR as the official US bogeyman in 1990, has had more than his fair share of criticism. However, Saddam’s transgressions, which we’ve highlighted many times in the past, are not the concern here. The real issue is the utter hypocrisy of the US and Britain over the Gulf crisis and the hidden agenda their cant conceals.

For instance, Saddam is lambasted for stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, chemical, weapons in particular. But isn’t it the case that the US, Britain and many other countries hoard the same? And wasn’t it the US who were themselves providing Saddam with anthrax not ten years ago, a poison weapons’ inspectors have been charged with tracking down? Moreover, when Saddam exterminated 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Hallabjah in 1988, who was more silent than Washington? As for Britain, the RAF have used mustard gas on Iraqi Kurds on several occasions in the past, in response to their demands for a homeland.

Saddam is often ridiculed as another Hitler, an unpredictable madman, a ruthless dictator. Yet these same opprobrious remarks come from the same people who armed him during a 10-year war with Iran, who tipped him off about a coup attempt days before he invaded Kuwait and who were sending weapons shipments to Iraq one month before Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti border.

Indeed, these same accusers leant their support to Pinochet and Galtieri, Trujillo, Marcos and Duvalier.Amin, Bokassa, Mobuto and Haile Selassie. The simple fact is that you’d be hard pressed to find a “madman” the West has not sponsored in the past 50 or so years.

Let’s get one thing straight; and this we have reported on numerous occasions. The Gulf War of 1991 had nothing to do with toppling Saddam and neither has any subsequent US attack on Iraq. This was recently made clear by UK Defence Secretary George Robertson who announced: "We are not in the business of toppling Saddam. This will be a job for his people” (Guardian, 3 February).

Washington is all too aware of the dangers a fragmented Iraq could pose the Gulf region were Saddam to be ousted. The country could easily split into three—a Kurdish north, a Sunni middle and a Shi'ite South—or into a plethora of warring factions, as was the case in Libya in the 1980s and Somalia 10 years later. In any event a further crisis would pose a greater threat to US hegemony and Gulf oil profits. It is, after all, no coincidence that the US State Department refers to the Gulf’s oil as "a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history”. Hence, the Western desire that Saddam stays where he is.

What is obvious is that the US and Britain are defending no moral high ground in the Gulf. Saddam’s disregard for the UN and world opinion in general reflects that of the US itself on many occasions, and the crimes and atrocities attributed to his regime fall well within the scope of similar atrocities the US have themselves deemed acceptable since 1945.

The present Gulf crisis should reveal at once the lengths the US and its sidekick, Britain, are prepared to go to secure the interests of their respective corporate elites. It also reveals just how obsessed the US is with the concept of “global leadership".

That millions in Iraq continue to suffer in the name of profit is a scathing indictment on the politics of power and its consequent rewards.The sad truth is that we will enter the 21st Century no wiser for the conflicts that saw the 20th Century close. The next century offers no end to the madness until workers begin to tear away the thin veil of conceit capitalism cloaks itself in and see at last the system in all its hideous nakedness, as the monster it always was, and will be.

John Bissett

Bombing people in Iraq, to protect oil supplies, has long been a part of Labour's "ethical foreign policy” going back to the first Labour government in 1924, as the extracts, below, from the Socialist Standard of the time show:

Labour Rules The Empire With Bombs and Bullets.

The repeated use of bombs in Mespot by the Air Force since the Labour Government came into office is another item in their black and brutal record. It shows how willing they are to do the dirty work for the capitalists in maintaining their ownership and control. Under the Conservative Government bombs were frequently used to aid in compelling payment of taxes, but, of course, that was "the dirty method of the Capitalists.” How similar the rule of the Labour Party is was admitted by Mr. Leach, the Labour Minister, in the House of Commons in answer to a Tory question. He said:-

We had communicated with our military and air headquarters in Iraq in regard to the whole situation in bombing operation, and I cannot honestly say that we have made any change in the policy of the late Government .-(Parliamentary Debates, June 30, column 925.)

The "pacifist" minister defends bombing as a humane method and tells the Daily Herald (July 15) that it is "a great saving to the taxpayer," as military forces cost more! In the language of an Empire Builder, he talks of the necessity to stop the tribesmen fighting, so that the land of oil annexed to "our Empire" shall be a sweet land of peace and profit. Therefore, the Labour Government is suppressing all attempts at rebellion by the kindly and Christian use of bombs.

This rule of force in the interests of Capital is shown also by the shooting down of Indians under this Labour Government. 

(Socialist Standard, August 1924.)

How Labour Ruled Mespot. The Truth About The Slaughter.

When it became known the bomb-dropping was regularly used by the Labour Government as a means of peacefully persuading Irak Tribesmen that British capitalism had a better right in their country than they had themselves, many simple supporters of the Labour Party were shocked. They had supposed that Empires can be built on love and maintained by soft words, and they were greatly relieved when Mr. Leach explained the whole matter away.

Mr. Leach accounted for British occupancy of the territory by saying that it was a point of honour to remain and fulfill “our" pledges; and he was able to give the assurance that:

Under our administration British air operations have so far caused no death. Thanks to the method of warning notices, submission takes place five times out of six without recourse to bombs, and has succeeded in the remaining cases through the destruction of property and cattle.-Daily Herald, July 15th, 1924.

Now Lord Thomson, Chief of the Air Ministry, of which Mr. Leach was Under-secretary, has disclosed the real facts. It was not honour but capitalist interest in oil which kept the Labour Government in Irak, and with regard to the bomb-dropping Mr. Leach appears to have resorted to complete suppression of the facts.

The following quotation is from a lecture given by Lord Thomson at a meeting of the Central Asian Society on November 21st ("The Times.” November 22nd, 1924.)

After briefly tracing the route followed in his tour, Lord Thomson brought home to his audience the efficacy of bombing by describing the manner in which the recent Wahabi invasion of the Transjordan was crushed. The British forces consisted solely of aeroplanes sent out at the shortest possible notice, backed by armoured cars. The effect of our air attack was appalling. Some 700 of the tribesmen were killed and the rest, seized with panic, fled into the desert, where hundreds more must have perished from thirst. Unless some such punishment as swift and terrible as this had been inflicted, the task of restoring order would have been long drawn-out. and in the end more costly in lives and money, while the results would not have been so lasting.

(Socialist Standard, December 1924.)

Voice From The Back: Censorship (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Censorship 

One of capitalism’s inherent contradictions/conflicts is being sharpened to killing point by the rapid development of the Internet: that of freedom of information versus privacy. Our freedom as individuals to find out facts about commercial companies and government is counterbalanced by their freedom to find out (and share) facts about us. “An entire new technical architecture to facilitate e-commerce is being created . . . ready to be grafted on to the older, libertarian architecture of the net. And therein lies the danger . . . the values implicit in the architecture of this new layer will be radically different from those implicit in the old one. The key difference will be that the new layer will use the technical facilities of the old layer to eliminate anonymity and erode privacy . . . Within such an architecture, the practice of anonymous reading—one of the great bulwarks of intellectual freedom—could be rendered impossible, at least in relation to online documents.” Index on Censorship, March.

Pirates 

Hundreds of merchant seaman are attacked, and several killed, by pirates each year as hard-pressed shipping companies cut back on staff and security. The wave of modern piracy has grown threefold over the past decade, leaving Britain’s merchant seamen feeling let down by the Government and their employers . . . Seamen and maritime experts blame the economics of shipping . . . Cargoes such as oil, sugar or aluminium bars are easily unloaded and their origins disguised in Far Eastern ports, notably China. Financial losses are covered by insurers. Financial Mail on Sunday, 11 June.

Blood money 

When this Labour Government was returned to power an inexplicable euphoria seemed to grip the British media. Supporters of Labour were soon delighting in religious-type mantras: “Education, education, education,” “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” Perhaps the most unrealistic piece of garbage was the news that the British Foreign Office was overturning centuries of ruthless cynicism and adopting an “ethical foreign policy”. What is the reality behind this sham? “Officials from dozens of the world’s most repressive regimes have been invited by the Government to view and buy high-powered military equipment at Farnborough Air Show next month. Many will have a significant proportion of the expenses of their trips paid by taxpayers the UK defence Export Sales Organisation” (Observer, 11 June). So welcome Indonesia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and any other repressive dictatorship—come and buy. Ignore the nonsense of “ethics”; that is only cant produced for the gullible. After all, the arms trade is worth £5 billion a year to British capitalism.

TV Times 

So it’s no surprise that new research from the University of Essex shows that in the last 30 years, the average person has gained only 20 minutes’ extra free time each day. That’s about a TV half-hour. So what are you going to send that extra leisure time watching? TV Times, 15-21 April.

The cold facts 

Capitalism is a cruel social system. Based as it is on the profit motive, we expect it to ignore social needs if they conflict with that of profit. All workers suffer from its madness, but the old and the infirm seem to be its worst victims: “Lord Whitty, Environment minister, said yesterday that an estimated 4.3 million households in England were living in cold, damp and health-hazardous conditions. Around 30,000 winter deaths, mainly among elderly or disabled people and children, are linked with ‘fuel poverty’.” Times, 10 June.

The dignity of labour? 

An article in the Times (7 June) reveals just how widespread the Big Brother role is today: “All the same, it is worth remembering that if you are working on a computer (and who isn’t these days?) then keeping tabs on what you are up to is an easy matter for an employer—and it doesn’t stop at monitoring Internet use or snooping at e-mail. Did you know that, in addition, seven out of ten employers routinely watch their staff through CCTV systems and/or covert surveillance systems? Even if you are not caught on camera pinching anything from the stationery cupboard, advanced in technology mean that your company can still monitor what you are up to. Computer programmes are available that will log your every key stroke—including the time, frequency and speed. That means your boss can glean a complete picture of your productivity, work rate and the amount of time you spend away from the keyboard.” And to think that George Orwell’s 1984 used to be looked upon as a work of science fantasy.

So They Say: A Moral Stand, Not Taken (1974)

The So They Say Column from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Moral Stand, Not Taken

“Disillusionment” sweeps among Labour supporters like influenza after, usually, a year or two of the government they put in. This time a month or two has set the virus on its feet. One Labour journalist whose readers may already feel the symptoms is Matthew Coady of the Sunday People. In his “Week in Politics” on 31st March he wrote:

  Britain’s helping hand to Chile is to be withdrawn — and rightly. Mrs. Judith Hart. Minister for Overseas Aid, has made the only possible decision.
. . . This Generals’ bloodbath, which overthrew a Left Wing regime, is reckoned to have cost 10,000 lives, many of them executed after secret trials.
Is this the kind of set-up that Britain should help to under-pin ? Of course it isn’t.
. . . There is always a price for a moral stand. In this case it is the price of copper.

Brave words, but mistaken ones. Contrast them with the front-page story in The Guardian only two weeks later, headed Heffer may go after defying Wilson:

  Mr. Eric Heffer, Minister of State for Industry, last night faced imminent disciplinary action over his speech on Saturday in which he threw overboard the traditions of collective Cabinet responsibility and sharply criticized the Government’s decision to complete an arms contract with Chile.

(Guardian, 15th April)

Perhaps before writing “there is always a price” Coady should have seen what was in the News of the World on the day he said it: Wilson warns of price spiral.

Grow Old Along With Me . . .

A second strange story from a Labour figure was that of Mrs. Marcia Williams, Wilson’s private secretary. On 11th April she made a statement to the press about the “land deals affair” in which her brother bought property with a highly profitable future. Saying “My conscience is dear”, Mrs. Williams explained:

  Employed as I have been, personally, there has been no pension attached to my job . . . I became involved in this venture, nominally, because it was felt that my 25 per cent interest (later reduced to 20 per cent) would provide income over the period of working which could be invested in a pension fund for my retirement.

(Daily Mirror, 11th April)

The fact that there is no pension attached to her job means that Mrs. Williams would have to depend on the State retirement pension. She finds the prospect unacceptable. That is understandable; and it leaves us with the thought that what the Labour government doles out with such self-praise to the working class, its members see as unsufficient to live on

Yes, Sir, That's Whose Baby?

Strange story no. 3. Newspapers on 5th April reported that consultation papers on the road and town accompaniments to the intended Maplin Airport were being rescinded, and the project was therefore now as good as killed off. The Guardian described it as “the Conservative Government’s multi-million pound plan”, and said:

  Mr. Crosland [Secretary for the Environment! has long been opposed to Maplin. On January 16, six weeks before the election, he assured the Commons that a Labour Government would cancel the project within "a matter of weeks”.

The fact is that a Labour government originated it all. In 1966 Labour said that a third London airport was needed and should be at Stansted — motorway, town development and all. After protests other sites were named, and in turn protested over, until Maplin was settled upon.

Claiming credit for squashing one’s own idea is quite novel. Perhaps that is the idea behind trading arms to Chile — to take “a moral stand” and stop it, later.

A Fertile Suggestion

Socialists always welcome old friends, and a venerable one has turned up this month. In a letter to The Observer on 7th April A. Rees of Bradford asserted that the poor make themselves poor by having too many children:

  I cannot help thinking that the people in the poverty trap have reproduced themselves into it. The problem is surely the folly of trying to raise children on low wages, breeding poverty as they breed children.

There is scope for some fascinating calculation here. Lord Longford has a large family but is well breeched; how many children would he have had to have to make himself poor? What about Lord Sainsbury? To get into the “poverty trap” by this method he’d have to put out the work to contract.

On the other hand, Mrs. Marcia Williams did not think of avoiding poverty by going to a birth-control clinic. She had a slice of a property deal instead — showing she knows the facts of life better than A. Rees of Bradford.

Unions and Politics

The General Secretary of the TUC made a speech on 28th March which contained valuable information for left-wing militants. First:

  Mr. Murray . . . said yesterday that no Government would do things for the trade union movement without expecting something from the unions in return. Mr. Murray, who was speaking to a parliamentary press gallery luncheon, said the union movement could not expect unquestioning co-operation.

This should dispose of the idea that “political strikes” can bring compliance from governments, or even that a change of government will give militants what they have been shouting for. And to make the point clear, he later referred to the high-spot of the 1972 agitation against the Industrial Relations Act:

  Mr. Murray accepted that the actions of the Pentonville five — the dockers who were saved from gaol only on the intervention of the Official Solicitor — had been regarded as stupid by some. But the incident had shown how important it was not to make martyrs.

(Guardian, 29th March)

At the time, the five dockers were claimed to have been released by the threat of a strike — a great victory for militant solidarity etc. Len Murray now confirms that it was not so. He might have added that six other pickets went to gaol last year without any suggestion that they were martyrs, and the only protest was a mild one at the severity of their sentences.

A Continuing Mess

What would be thought of a newspaper which, through failure of organization, had two blank pages in every issue? or a tobacconist whose packets of twenty cigarettes had only eighteen in? Presumably, that if they could not put their businesses in order they would soon be out of business.

Yet capitalism tries to educate children and fails in an equally elementary respect. A group in the Manchester College of Education wrote in the Education Guardian on 9th April:

  In research carried out recently by the Cadmean Trust it was revealed that 15 in every 100 children leave school virtually illiterate.

The writers call it “a national disgrace”. But after more than a century of educational expansion, continual reorganization, extension of the school-leaving age and so on the basic problem of education is unsolved. Is it not time capitalism was thrown out for inefficiency in this and every other direction?

Robert Barltrop

Make A Difference (2001)

From the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Does anybody really still believe that either Labour or the Conservatives can make any difference? Is there any point in choosing between them?

Well he would say that—or something like that—wouldn’t he. His audience were not to know that what Blair meant was that his government would be so hostile to outdated dogma and ideology that they would simply carry on where the Tories had left off. For example soon after the election John Major buttonholed Jack Straw to ask why New Labour were sticking to the Tory spending plans which Kenneth Clarke, Major’s Chancellor, had described as “eye-wateringly tight”. Had the Tories been re-elected, said Major, they would never have stuck by them.

In fact Labour won that election on a minority vote—44 percent to the Conservatives 31 percent, the Liberal Democrats 17 percent and the others 7 percent. As the next election draws near, the Labour election experts are resisting any tendency to over-confidence. “This time,” said one of them recently, “we cannot afford a quiet campaign or for Hague to be ignored. The size of our majority will depend on a high turn out”. It is almost traditional among party agents and activists to assume that the lower the total vote the worse it is for Labour. So if the weather on polling day is bad, or if there has been a particularly stressful episode of Coronation Street, or if it’s football on the box—the Tories can be expected to do relatively better; they might even win some seats which they would otherwise have lost. It seems as if the very people who are supposed to benefit the most from Labour selflessly building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land can be put off from voting for it by a shower of rain or Deirdre Rashid’s latest emotional spasm or the spectacle of some millionaires kicking a football at a net.

It does not need a degree in psychology to work out that voters stay away from the poll through apathy but it does seem to need some political awareness to appreciate that a prime cause of apathy is the similarity between contesting parties which suggests that there is no point in choosing between them. This sometimes worries the parties themselves to such an extent that they feel obliged to try to highlight what they hope we will agree are fundamental differences between them. Before the last election Portillo tried to convince us that there is such a thing as a genuine Labour/Tory debate by talking about the “clear blue water” separating them. More recently Blair’s speechwriters thought he should speak out against the “forces of conservatism” (by which he did not mean just the Tory Party).

Thatcher

The Labour Party—or at least the few members who have bothered to find out about their party’s disreputable history—should be haunted by memories of 1931, when their leaders finally conceded that as their policies were so similar to those of Stanley Baldwin’s Conservatives they might as well go the whole hog and form a government together. Apart from anything else this deprived Labour of some charismatic and well-known leaders like Macdonald and Thomas and replaced them with the lachrymose George Lansbury and later the reserved, colourless Clement Attlee—who, when he became Prime Minister in 1945, showed that he was anything but mousy and compliant. One effect of the events of 1931 was to sustain the idea that Labour was actually engaged in a fight with the Tories, who were basically different. That illusion kept a lot of party members going, through the worst defeat of their history. What is the situation now?

Blair came to power at a time when Thatcher had gained a reputation for being a kind of mad woman in the tower. Thatcherism was a new swearword for a supposed policy of deliberately creating unemployment through destroying swathes of a once powerful manufacturing industry, with the effect of grinding down the poorest in society while cracking down on anyone who tried to keep their head above water through offending against the system’s property laws. If all this got too much for the voters to stomach, their doubts could be diverted by a jingoist stimulant like the war in the Falklands. Capitalism is always ugly but that was a a time when it was grotesquely so.

So how did Blair signal that all that was at an end? Well as soon as he could spare time from organising a few necessities like Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation to the party he forgot all he had ever said about Thatcher laying waste to British jobs and industry and popped round to get some advice from her on the best way to run British capitalism. In her turn Thatcher made it clear that she preferred Blair to her successor John Major, who had disappointed a lot of Tories as a flaccid nonentity. This opinion was not just a passing aberration by someone driven out of her mind by all those years of being the most powerful person in Britain, hobnobbing with—and bullying when she could get away with it—other heads of state. Before the election Blair had so impressed Viscount Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, with his intention to “reform” the welfare state that the Tory press baron swung his newspaper into support for New Labour on the grounds that they were the “new Conservatives”. And Alistair McAlpine, who was Thatcher’s Party Treasurer and remains one of her keenest admirers, praised Blair as “…a damn sight more Conservative than John Major…a Thatcherite… a man of principle…quite princely.” (McAlpine was accustomed to speak his mind. He once described Major as “hanging about like a pair of curtains”).

Single Parents

Blair’s government did not come to deserve such praise from such exalted quarters by planning to revolutionise society so that social relationships were adjusted through a re-distribution of wealth. In October 1997 Peter Mandelson, then in charge at the Department of Industry, assured a meeting of executives from computer firms that New Labour was “. . . intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. What he did not say was that they were equally relaxed about other people getting stinking poor. One of their earliest ventures was to cut the benefit of single parents—a particularly depressed and pressurised group. As most of these are females some of the more odious Labour MPs felt justified in attacking the essential immorality of unmarried women who got pregnant to jump the council housing queue while they claimed benefit to pay for their cigarettes and Bacardis. One of these MPs—Frank Field, who had risen through the poverty lobby to become Member for Birkenhead and Minister for Welfare Reform—said that “There are no single mums in Birkenhead. They all have a boy friend somewhere”. The legislation for reducing the benefits of single parents was first introduced by the Tories, when it was denounced as a typical example of the cruelties of Thatcherism. Peter Lilley was the minister concerned; he was exultant at New Labour’s open support for the cause of punishing the poor and stood in the Commons directing Labour MPs into the correct lobby to vote for the cuts.

McAlpine does not admire all of Labour’s luminaries and one who escapes his embrace is Jack Straw, an exception to the tradition of Labour Home Secretaries such as Roy Jenkins, who liked to see themselves as “radical” and “liberal”. In the intensity of hatred he has aroused in the lobbies of penal reform and civil liberties Straw has exceded his immediate Tory predecessor, Michael Howard. “I couldn’t stand Michael Howard,” said McAlpine, “so imagine what I feel about Straw”. He was referring to the Home Secretary’s intention to abolish the law of double jeopardy, to allow people to be tried again for an offence for which they have already been tried and acquitted. As we go to press Straw has not revealed how many more times he wants a person to be tried or if it will go on and on until they are convicted but when he does decide it will no doubt be with an eye to the fact that while he has been at the Home Office the prison population has reached over 65,000. This trend will probably be accentuated by another of Straw’s plans, to erode the right to opt for trial by a jury at a Crown Court, where there is a better chance of acquittal than before magistrates.

Education

Straw is a former President of the National Union of Students, who may have learned at university that he should get his hair cut and smooth his image if he was to climb the greasy pole into Parliament and a top government job. On the way up he said a few things which might now embarrass a less sensitive and ambitious man. For example his denunciation of private prisons as immoral. In fact there was always more than an element of the bogus about the opposition to private prisons, which ignored the dreadful conditions existing in state prisons. The Chief Inspector of Prisons recently condemned Brixton and Wandsworth as appalling and inhumane, he said that Winson Green in Birmingham is even worse than Brixton and that Young Offender Institutions like Feltham in Middlesex and Brinsford in Wolverhampton are “corrosive”. Could private institutions, it is fair to ask, be any worse? But in those heady days in opposition Straw’s ambition was urgent enough to override facts.

Another New Labour front bencher stubbornly trying to put his past behind him is Minister of Education David Blunkett, who was once thought to be the teachers’ friend but turned out to be their scourge. There was a time when Blunkett could denounce Tory education plans for callously undermining the future of the children. Now he spends his days thinking up new ways of weeding out and punishing any teacher who fails to come up to standard in defiance of the kind of deprivation and alienation to be found in the slums of the inner city or rural deserts. His demands that teaching conforms to centrally conceived and imposed standards of achievement has damaging effects on teachers and sometimes disastrous results for the pupils. This kind of pressure was supposed to have been wiped out by the advent of the comprehensive school—once a cherished principle of the Labour Party but now due to be abolished, sneered at as “bog standard” by self-appointed education expert Alistair Campbell, who also happens to be Blair’s public relations man. Campbell is extremely adept at handling a few stroppy hacks but he might be a bit bog standard himself if he were faced with teaching a classroom of young toughies from the local estate. Blunkett plans to introduce an openly selective system—the same system that was eventually rejected as responsible for blighting so many young lives.

Ethics

Another Minister whose performance in opposition persuaded a lot of people that he would make a difference is Robin Cook, who reluctantly accepted the job of Foreign Secretary and quickly began to rave about an “ethical” foreign policy without telling us that the ethics would involve him cheerily shaking hands with the murderous dictator of Indonesia, President Suharto, or Blair hailing as a “fellow moderniser” a butcher like the Chinese premier Zhu Rongji and the ex-KGB operative who is now Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying on the blood bath in Chechnya. These were examples of how capitalism fashions the “ethics” of foreign policy. The arms industry in Britain sells about £5 billion worth of its products each year to Indonesia. China and Russia are important trading partners. Beside that, of what concern are thousands of people imprisoned or murdered for their opinions or slaughtered in a war? In any case it took Cook only a few months to modify his ambitions over an “ethical” foreign policy. “Compromise, “ he announced on a BBC radio programme in January 1998, “is inevitable to foreign policy. That is real life”. That declaration can be understood properly only by someone who is alive to what “compromise” and “real life” mean in the context of capitalist society and the lowly place it gives to human lives and welfare compared to the profit-demanding priorities of the ruling class.

It is little wonder if the voting working class have difficulty in separating Labour from the Tories. The solution is to understand that the parties are united in their principles to maintain capitalism and all that that entails. In March 1972 Roy Jenkins, who had been Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer so should have known what he was talking about, observed life in this country:

   In spite of half a century of effort, our society—and still more our world—is still disfigured by gross unfairness . . . The poor are still poor. Property speculators—and others—are as relatively rich as were those with an accepted position at the top of the social structure.

Almost thirty years later, Jenkins’s successors in the Labour Party tell us that about a third of the children in this country live in what Blair has called “frightening” deprivation. And New Labour, with their big majority and their clutch of government ministers trying to forget the indiscretions of their left wing youth while they grow daily more and more like the Tories they once professed to despise, promise that in twenty years’ time they will have got around to abolishing child poverty. Does anyone really believe them? Does anyone really believe that it is worth choosing between Labour and the Tories? Does anyone really believe that to cast a vote for either of these parties will make a difference?

Ivan

Editorial: The Slippery Slopes of Labourism (1946)

Editorial from the December 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to R. L. Stevenson, “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." He put into words what Labour Party supporters learn in the hard way about Labour governments. They march hopefully towards their appointed goal only to discover when they reach it that it was not where they wanted to be. They ought then to stop and ask themselves whether they have been on the right road; instead they start denouncing the MacDonald or the Attlee whom they chose to lead them. It has not taken long for the cleavage to come in the ranks of the present Labour Government. In the House of Commons, on November 18th, well over a hundred Labour M.P.s— though they would not actually vote against their own Government—forcibly expressed their dislike of its foreign policy by abstaining from voting. The Government got its vote of confidence, 353 to nil, with the help of many Tory M.P.s. It is a symptom of a spreading discontent with the Labour Government, which carries on a foreign policy largely taken over from its Conservative predecessors. One Labour writer, Mr. Hannen Swaffer, claims that it is supported by millions of trade unionists. He quoted one of the Labour M.P.s as saying: “We are heading for war. We had to do something about it” (People, 17/11/46).

The failure of the “rebels" to back their condemnatory speeches with their votes was a farcical end to the revolt, and naturally the Tories jeered, but for many sincere supporters of the Labour Party it is the beginning of a tragedy, the tragedy of seeing the Government of their choice turn its back on long- proclaimed hopes and pledges.

How the minds of the Labour Ministers are working was shown by several revealing passages in their speeches, the keynote being that the fine words of pre-election programmes have little bearing on the realities of the world as it is. Prime Minister Mr. Attlee trounced the rebel Labour M.P.s and charged them with holding views “which . . . do not correspond with the facts and which are based upon profound misapprehension of the inevitable conditions under which foreign affairs are conducted ’’ (Hansard, Nov. 18th, col. 589). He defended Mr. Bevin with the plea that "he is not the slave of an abstract theory. He is a practical man of affairs seeking to get things done." This was ever the defence of the politician who won't or can't fulfil the rosy hopes he held out before entering office. Mr. Dalton, defending the Government's decision to retain conscription, put it more crudely when he begged one of the Labour rebels “not to mistake catch phrases of long ago for the realities of to-day.’’

The real tragedy, from a working-class standpoint, is that the sincere Labour supporters of both sides fail to see why the present situation was bound to arise. To the rebels it appears merely that Mr. Bevin is the wrong man with the wrong policy for Foreign Secretary. To the loyal majority, on the other hand, it appears necessary to drop impractical ideals and be realists. Neither side will face up to the stubborn fact that foreign policy is determined by the position the Labour Government occupies of trying to administer capitalism in a capitalist world.

Some of the rebels would, no doubt, like to vote in accordance with their uneasy feeling that it is wrong for a Labour Government to be in this position, but their fatal weakness is that they have not got backing in their constituencies. One loyal Labour M.P., Mr. W. Nally, took refuge behind the views, held “rightly or wrongly," of “ the average man in the average pub." It is, of course, true, as we have always maintained, that until the “average man" has been won over from his wrong ideas to Socialism, no other policy is possible than a capitalist policy.

It is not only in foreign affairs that Labour Government deeds are destroying the confidence and enthusiasm of Labour supporters. On the home front the Labour Party is in wholesale—though, as yet, not fully recognised—retreat. As long as the Labour Party has been in existence its most prominent propagandists have given lip-service to the Socialist condemnation of the capitalist system for its “profit motive." Now a changed line has been announced without any attempt being made first to get it endorsed by the members of the Labour Party. This line was defined by Mr. Herbert Morrison in a speech at Birmingham, reported in the Daily Herald (October 28th, 1946). “There is no need," he said, “to abolish the profit motive,” all that is required is to rid it of abuses. Three days later the Daily Herald told its readers that one of the reasons for the Labour Government's drive for increased production and the most economical use of labour was that these are essential “to preserve the real value of both wages and profits" (Daily Herald, 31/10/46). Many Labour voters will be astonished to learn that one of the objects of their Party is to “preserve the real value of profits." Some may ask themselves, too, how the present policy of discouraging wage increases fits in with pre-election promises and with the increase of M.P.s’ salaries from £600 to £1,000 a year in April last. They may also notice a significant exception, the increase of police pay by 15s. a week. The Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Ede, rather indiscreetly let the cat out of that bag when he stated that he hopes the increase will produce a contented police force “to enable us to deal with the difficult circumstances which still confront us and will confront us for some months ahead” (Times, 18/11/46). A few days later one “difficult circumstance” occurred in Manchester, where the police came into conflict with bus workers out on strike.

Many other examples can be found of the widening gulf between promise and performance. In 1944 Mr. E. Bevin said that after the war “There will be . . . no fear of unemployment for several years” (People, 26/11/44). Recently we have seen Mr. Marquand’s admissions about possible industrial depressions, and Mr. Morrison’s confession that no government can guarantee full employment ” (Reynolds News, 27/10/46). Already unemployment is not far below the 400,000 mark.

Then there is the question of taxation of profits and of big incomes. Mr. Dalton, who reduced Excess Profits Tax this year by 40 per cent., also told the House of Commons, on November 18th, 1946, that he hoped gradually to diminish Surtax (the tax levied on incomes above £2,000 a year), but that the financial burden of conscription means that "Surtax will not be able to be reduced quite so rapidly as it otherwise would have been” (Hansard, 18/11/46, col. 630). On November 13th, addressing the Fabian Society, Mr. Dalton blandly threw overboard the Labour Party’s very old claim that direct taxation (income tax, etc.) is better for the workers than indirect taxation (taxes on tobacco, beer, etc). "The old idea that direct taxation is, in all circumstances, better than indirect taxation has been disproved by recent experience ” (Daily Worker, 14/11/46).

Lastly, on November 14th, Mr. Eden entertained the House of Commons by quoting from Mr. Strachey’s “Why You Should be a Socialist” (revised and republished in 1944) a sweeping condemnation of the increased production stunt that Mr. Strachey and the rest of the Government are busily preaching up and down the country. Though capitalism is now run by the Labour Party, it is just as true as when Mr. Strachey wrote it that "however hard the workers work, they will remain workers, and poor workers at that. Hard work will not make the workers any richer.”

Another group that has turned a somersault like Mr. Strachey is the Communist Party, with which he used to associate. They used to be all against the "work harder” campaign and are now all for it, and on the same day that the vote of confidence took place in the House (their two M.P.s abstaining) the Times published an interview with M. Thorez Secretary-General of the French Communist Party, in which he boasted that the French miners are now producing 15 per cent. more than before the war as a direct response to the Communist Party’s appeal. He went on to assure the readers of the Tory Times that if his Party became the Government of France they have no intention of abolishing capitalism: —

  "We repeated deliberately in our electoral campaign that we do not ask a mandate to apply a strictly Communist programme—one, that is, resting on a radical transformation of the present regime of property and of the conditions of production that flow from that. 'We have put forward a programme of national reconstruction, such as all democrats may accept, including some nationalisation, but also the support of medium and small industrial and craft undertakings, and the defence of present property against the trusts’” (Times, 18/11/46.)

The lesson to be drawn from this spectacle of British Labour Party dissension and of compromise with capitalism in Britain and France is that the whole policy of trying to operate capitalism is fallacious and full of danger for the working class. What the workers need is not Labour Party or Communist Party administration of Capitalism, but its abolition and replacement by Socialism; but that will be done only when a majority have been won over to Socialism, and the instruments for its accomplishment will not be the Labour and Communist Parties.

There’s no such thing as an ethical foreign policy (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ethical foreign policy? What a joke! How, in a capitalist world where each state is competing against every other state for a share of profits, can a government base its foreign policy on anything except economic self-interest—the economic self-interest, that is, of its capitalists?

“Obtain profits or die”, that is the economic law governing the conduct of states under global capitalism. And it cannot be otherwise for as long as global capitalism lasts.

Everybody knows that the reason for the Gulf War nearly ten years ago can be summed up in three letters O-I-L. Iraq, a virtually land-locked country wanted secure access to the sea for its exports and imports, so it invaded Kuwait. This represented a threat to the oil supplies of the capitalist West, so they went to war—and are still bombing and killing and starving ordinary people in Iraq to remove this threat. This has nothing to do with the fact that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who couldn’t care a damn about human rights. There are plenty of other dictators in the area—beginning with the King of Saudi Arabia and the other hereditary Gulf despots—who are left alone because they are on the side of the capitalist West.

It was the same earlier this year in Kosovo. Serbia wasn’t attacked because it was a dictatorship under Slobodan Milosevic but because it was a state with a powerful army that had been causing problems for Western capitalist interests in the area and had overstepped the mark. Neighbouring dictator and fellow ethnic-cleanser, Tunjman of Croatia, was left alone because he was “our bastard”.

East Timor? Who had heard of East Timor before last month? When Indonesian troops marched into this former Portuguese colony in 1975 the UN passed a resolution saying Indonesia had broken international law and left it at that. In the following years the Western capitalist powers competed amongst themselves for lucrative contracts from the Indonesian military. The ruling generals were invited to arms shows to buy guns, tanks, warplanes, ships, any military hardware they needed to maintain their grip on the country they were exploiting for their own ends.

“Please don’t use these weapons against your own people,” requested an ethically-minded diplomat. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” replied the generals. “That’s all right then,” replied the diplomat. When confronted with evidence that the generals were using British weapons for internal repression, a British Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms, then the French would.” Questioned in the Assemblée Nationale on the same point, a French Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms then the British would.”

When oil was discovered in the sea between East Timor and Australia, the Australian government decided that the Indonesian invasion of East Timor was not so contrary to international law after all. In order to get a share of the oil they signed an agreement recognising East Timor as part of Indonesia. Now they are leading the forces sent in to take East Timor from Indonesia. No wonder their erstwhile friends, the Indonesian rulers, regard them as two-faced double-dealers.

And of course a place like East Timor can never survive on its own. It’s obviously going to end up as an Australian dependency, no doubt giving Australia an even better oil deal.

That’s the way of the world—the capitalist world. And it’s no good just protesting about this and appealing to governments to base their foreign policy on ethical considerations. They can’t (except in words) even if they wanted to, since this would hamper them in the struggle for profits—and the trade routes, and investment outlets, and raw material sources, and strategic areas, to secure them.

The only way out is to get rid of global capitalism and replace it by a world socialist system in which all that is in and on the Earth becomes the common heritage of all humanity so that it can be used for the benefit of every man, woman and child on the planet irrespective of where they live, a small island or the industrialised heartlands.

Adam Buick