Voice From The Back: Californian Nightmare (2007)

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

Californian Nightmare

The dreadful fires in California that led to death and destruction were well reported in the British press, but what was hardly covered was the plight of the immigrant workers. “Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week. … Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns. The wildfires, one of the biggest disasters to strike the county, exposed their often-invisible existence in ways that were sometimes deadly. The four bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration. …Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires. Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs. ‘There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,’ said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. ‘It’s outrageous.’ Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported.” (New York Times, 27 October) What a comment on capitalism, some workers live in such poverty and insecurity they give up their lives in an attempt to keep a menial weekly wage.

Wall Street Shuffle

We are always being told that capitalism is a competitive system that rewards success and punishes failure, but what are we to make of the following? “Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down. Mr. O’Neal, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is entitled to $30 million in retirement benefits as well as $129 million in stock and option holdings, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates using yesterday’s share price of $66.09. That would be on top of the roughly $160 million he took home in his nearly five years on the job. Under Mr. O’Neal, Merrill moved aggressively into lucrative businesses like the packaging of subprime mortgages and other complex debt securities. …But those big bets appeared to go bust this week. Merrill announced an $8.4 billion write-down, raising questions about whether Mr. O’Neal will keep his job. One thing that he surely will hold onto, though, are the giant paychecks he has collected. ‘I lay the blame at the foot of the board,” Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager and president of Investors for Director Accountability. “He was paid a tremendous amount of money to create a loss that is mind-boggling, and he obviously took risks that should never have been taken.’” (New York Times, 27 October) He managed to lose $8.4 billion for the company and can claim $159 million for his efforts. Who says capitalism isn’t crazy?

This Is Communism?

“The United States has more billionaires than any other country: 415 by the last count of Forbes magazine. No. 2, and closing fast? China. A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the widely watched Hurun Report. Forbes has documented 66. ..As much as the bounty of billionaires is a source of pride, it is also a potential cause for concern in a nominally Communist country. Per capita income in China is less than $1,000 a year.” (New York Times, 7 November) China is a fast developing capitalist country and just like any other capitalist economy the gap between the rich and the poor is immense.

Chinese Statistics

One of the effects of the rapid expansion of Chinese capitalism is the pollution of the atmosphere and drinking water. This has led to these horrendous statistics. “40% – Percentage by which birth defects among Chinese infants have risen since 2001, according to a government report, which linked the rise to environmental pollution. 460,000 – Number of Chinese who die prematurely every year from exposure to pollution and dirty water.” (Time, 12 November) This expansion may be leading to the creation of more billionaires, but it is also producing more corpses.

Grenfell: an unquenchable blaze (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine waking at night inside walls of dripping flames in a fire that’s engulfing your flat in the tower block that is your home. A crackling storm of searing flames, where the walls turn to molten polyethylene (uPVC), a material described by Peter Apps, an editor at Inside Housing magazine, ‘like a solid petrol’ burning. It’s a material that melts as it burns, which it does easily at low temperatures. The air itself becomes as hot as the fire itself, scalding your lungs with each breath. Many victims of fire die in hospital from burn damage to lungs, days or weeks later after inhaling a suffocating thick black petroleum-based smoke. One element of the chemical cocktail released from burning uPVC is cyanide.

The escape routes, once familiar corridors and communal areas, now transformed into dark labyrinths of despair. The firefighters had told you stay put for safety but now the building’s uPVC shell is quickly and fully alight, dripping flaming materials floor to floor.

Grenfell Tower’s residents experienced this horror on 14 June 2017, when the 24-storey block was engulfed in fire, causing 72 deaths. The fire began with a malfunctioning fridge-freezer but spread due to the building’s combustible cladding, revealing systemic safety failures in UK construction and government oversight.

Survivor and campaigner testimonies

Survivors and bereaved families had consistently criticised the lack of accountability from authorities. They argue that Grenfell happened because the people in power saw the residents as expenses, not individuals. Grenfell Action Group (GAG), which was instrumental in raising concerns before the fire, repeatedly warned that a disaster was inevitable. Their warnings, however, were ignored. In a blog post written months before the fire, GAG chillingly predicted, ‘only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’.

Testimonies to the Inquiry, whose final report was published at the beginning of September, revealed that fire safety was sidelined in favour of cost reduction and aesthetics. Architects and contractors ignored basic safety practices, contributing to the mass killing. As lawyer Stephanie Barwise KC, representing survivors, noted, there were repeated opportunities to prevent the fire, but none were taken.

The inquiry has also shone a light on the inequality and indifference shown towards social housing tenants and marginalised communities.

Refurbishment and cladding

It started with regeneration. Decisions in relation to Grenfell made during the refurbishment of the tower avoided consulting residents who before the fire had formed a residents’ committee. The refurbishment project was carried out by private contractors under the direction of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO)

Following decades of deregulation and privatisation, social housing management has often been outsourced to private contractors, as was the case with KCTMO, which managed Grenfell on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This system of privatised management prioritised efficiency and cost-reduction over the safety of the residents.

Originally, fireproof cladding was planned for Grenfell’s refurbishment. However, the material was downgraded to save money. An email from one contractor revealed that lower quality cladding was selected to save money despite warnings about the fire risk posed by the material. As one Inquiry expert aptly described it, ‘the cladding was a time bomb waiting to go off’.

The decision to downgrade the type of cladding was made to increase profits for the subcontractor. It directly led to the rapid spread of the fire. It was a decision that didn’t involve the people whose lives would be affected, but whose lives were ended by this decision. The money ‘saved’ on the cladding and which ultimately ended 72 lives was £293,368.

Grenfell was a block in the midst of one of the most affluent areas of London, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and was considered by its rich neighbours as an eyesore. The cladding served more for aesthetic purposes, making the building blend in with the affluent neighbourhood of Kensington rather than improving its safety. It was, as one resident put it, just ‘lipstick for the building’.

The residents themselves pointed out that they were more concerned with the activities inside the building such as the decommissioning of the communal boiler in favour of installation of individual boilers in the hall outside of the flats. These boiler cupboards were installed so the KCTMO could reduce their own servicing costs while passing the cost of heating and hot water to individual residents, while still jacking up service charges, an area where regulation doesn’t prevent extortion of residents. These same boiler installations were cited by one victim of the fire as what prevented him from getting his daughter and pregnant wife out of the building during the fire. What was previously a straight line to the fire exit was now a series of enclaves that in the thick tar of petroleum-based plastic fuelled smoke, had trapped his family.

Systemic inequality and class divide

The KCTMO repeatedly ignored safety concerns raised by residents. Residents had formed grassroots resistance against the faceless body managing their lives, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. The KCTMO, motivated by cost-cutting, neglected the safety of Grenfell’s working-class residents. The residents were living in unsafe conditions.

Social inequality, an essential aspect of capitalism, was a core underlying cause of what happened. Survivors and campaigners pointed out that the fire would likely not have occurred in a building which housed wealthier residents, because standards of safety and maintenance would have been higher. Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell resident and campaigner, stated:

‘We were treated as second-class citizens because of our postcode and because we were poor’.

Dr Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert, concurred: ‘Grenfell exemplifies how housing policy in the UK, driven by neoliberal economics, has led to a profit-driven culture where the most vulnerable are treated as afterthoughts’.

A major critique emerging from the Grenfell fire is how capitalism treats housing as a commodity rather than as satisfying a basic human need. Housing policy has shifted towards encouraging individual ownership, with little regard for the safety of those left living in social housing. This has been underfunded and neglected for decades, often outsourced to private contractors whose primary concern is profit, not safety. Grenfell epitomises where this leads.

Corporate negligence and government deregulation

The corporate entities involved in Grenfell’s refurbishment, which included Rydon, Arconic and Celotex, are rightly criticised for their role in the mass killing. These companies continued to sell or install materials that were known to be unsafe, driven by the profit motive. Internal documents from Arconic, for example, showed that the company knew their cladding was highly flammable but continued to supply it because it was cheaper and there was little regulatory pressure to stop doing so.

These corporate entities are not just the few bad apples. Maximising profits is the standard practice not just in the housing and building industry but within all capitalist enterprises. Everyone living under capitalism is subjected to this law of the jungle that permeates every aspect in life.

The role of successive governments in the mass killing cannot be overlooked. They must share the blame. The previous Labour government brought in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, weakening fire safety regulations. This measure transferred responsibility for fire risk assessments to building owners and landlords, who rely on private contractors who, as always under the pressure of profit-making, are incentivised to minimise costs rather than maximise safety.

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government which took over from Labour in 2010 is also to be blamed for its role in the policies and decisions that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire, especially Eric Pickles, who was its Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015. His time in office was marked by several actions related to fire safety and housing regulation, many of which are now seen as contributing to the fire.

Pickles cut back on regulations including fire safety, as part of the broader government push to reduce public spending and further ‘cut red tape’. Under Pickles’s leadership, there was a move to reduce the burden on housing developers and councils to meet stringent safety standards. One example was the weakening of building regulations, which reduced the requirement for fire safety inspections in some types of properties.

This drive to deregulate was touted as making construction and housing development more cost-efficient, but by unleashing profit-seeking private companies it compromised safety; it was an outgrowth of capitalist ideology that places emphasis on reducing government oversight in favour of what are euphemistically termed market-led solutions. Profit always trumps the lives of working-class people. As socialists we know no matter how much the market is regulated no length of leash will hold back the mad dog of capital from attacking when his food bowl is threatened.

The role of capitalism

The decisions leading to the Grenfell killings are a reflection of capitalism’s systemic failures. The drive for profit at all costs, the deregulation of safety standards, and the neglect of social housing tenants are all inherent features of this economic system. As a result, the lives of working-class people are deemed expendable in the pursuit of wealth.

In 2017 in the aftermath of the fire David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary in the current Labour government, summed up the situation as: ‘This is what happens when you deregulate and allow market forces to dictate safety in housing. Profit comes first, people come second’.

Grenfell is not just a story of corporate and governmental negligence; it is a symbol of deep-seated inequality. The fire exposed the glaring class divides in London, where working-class residents of social housing are treated as expendable. Now that the Inquiry has reported, the survivors and campaigners remain determined to hold those responsible accountable and to ensure that no other community suffers the same fate.

For survivors and the bereaved, justice remains elusive. As survivor Edward Daffarn stated during his testimony: ‘No one has been held to account for what happened at Grenfell. We don’t just want words; we want to see real change.’

‘Justice for Grenfell’ is not merely about criminal charges or compensation—it is about systemic change, ending capitalism with its class inequality and profit priority.

A. T.

Editorial: The capitalist witches’ brew that led to Grenfell (2024)

Editorial from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The final report of the Inquiry into the Grenfell Fire makes devastating reading.

There was an active lack of interest in fire safety at the heart of central government:

‘In the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 there were many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation, particularly to high-rise buildings, and to take action in relation to them. Indeed, by 2016 the department was well aware of those risks, but failed to act on what it knew’ (Executive Summary (tinyurl.com/GrenfellExec), p. 7).

Then the most damning paragraph of the report:

‘One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products. They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market. In the case of the principal insulation product used on Grenfell Tower, Celotex RS5000, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) was complicit in that strategy’ (p. 10).

A regulatory body had been captured by the construction industry:

‘The National House Building Council (NHBC) […] failed to ensure that its building control function remained essentially regulatory and free of commercial pressures. It was unwilling to upset its own customers and the wider construction industry by revealing the scale of the use of combustible insulation in the external walls of high-rise buildings, contrary to the statutory guidance’ (p.14).

The local authority, Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), managed the property at arm’s length through a Tenants Management Organisation (TMO):

‘RBKC and the TMO were jointly responsible for the management of fire safety at Grenfell Tower. The years between 2009 and 2017 were marked by a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people. […] RBKC was responsible for overseeing the TMO’s activities, not monitoring its operations on a day-to-day basis, but its oversight of the TMO’s performance was weak and fire safety was not subject to any key performance indicator’ (p. 16).

The TMO allowed an unqualified person to be the fire safety manager, who carried out substandard assessments:

‘The demands of managing fire safety were viewed by the TMO as an inconvenience rather than an essential aspect of its duty to manage its property carefully’ (p. 17).

The TMO ‘wanted to reduce the cost’ by using the specific type of cladding panel that failed so appallingly but were badly advised by an incompetent firm of architects. In fact:

‘[not] one of those involved in the design of the external wall or the choice of materials acted in accordance with the standards of a reasonably competent person in their position’ (p. 19).

Here, then, were the ingredients of the capitalist witches’ brew that caused Grenfell: a housing market largely geared towards the wealthy, with workers squeezed into as little land and living space as possible. Politicians driven by an ideological aversion to regulation and a desire to please the construction industry. A local authority holding its tenants (many of whom were vulnerable people on benefits) at arm’s length as an unwelcome cost not to be listened to. A regulator captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate. Builders concerned with growing their profits over the wellbeing of the people who will live in the buildings. Unscrupulous manufacturers willing to gamble with people’s lives to sell a few more units of their goods, knowing profit-hungry builders wouldn’t look too closely and would cut them in on the action.

Grenfell was not a mistake but the result of a combination of regular occurrences under capitalism.

Pieces Together: Pay Up or Burn Down (2010)

The Pieces Together column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pay Up or Burn Down                                          

“A small rural community in western Tennessee is outraged and the fire chief is nursing a black eye after firefighters stood by and watched a mobile home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 municipal fee. South Fulton city firefighters – equipped with trucks, hoses and other firefighting equipment – didn’t intervene to save Gene Cranick’s doublewide trailer home when it caught fire last week. But they did arrive on the scene to protect the house of a neighbor, who had paid his fire subscription fee. ‘I just forgot to pay my $75,’ said Cranick.  ‘I did it last year, the year before. … It slipped my mind.’ Later that day, Cranick’s son Timothy went to the fire station to complain, and punched the fire chief in the face.” (AOL News, 6 October)

The Rich Get Richer                                           

“The shift of income to the top has occurred in the most prosperous English-speaking nations, such as Australia, Britain, and Canada. But it has been most pronounced in the United States. Thirty years ago, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 9 percent of total national income. By 2007, they had 23 percent. Last year, new census data show, the rich-poor income gap was the widest on record. Wealth is more unevenly distributed. The top 20 percent of wealth-holders own 84 percent of America’s wealth.” (Christian Science Monitor, 18 October)

Capital Gains

“The bosses of Britain’s largest companies are enjoying lavish pay rises despite the wobbly economic recovery, with most of the surge in rewards coming from long-term incentive schemes and gains from share options. The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies have seen their pay surge by 55% in a year, according to a report released yesterday by research group Incomes Data Services (IDS), while across the top 350 listed companies, total board pay rose by an average of 45%.” (Guardian, 29 October)

Situations Vacant                                          

“In Baltimore this weekend more than a hundred Roman Catholic bishops and priests gathered to discuss a skills shortage within their congregation; it seems there are simply not enough exorcists. Just as US industry has suffered a lack of engineers, the number of men capable of casting out demons has declined, even as demand for their services has increased. In parts of the country they are now harder to find than a good plumber.” (Times, 15 November)

World View: The sinking of the Kursk (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 10.31am on Saturday August 12, a rocket-propelled torpedo on a Russian submarine misfired during the launch routine, and its highly volatile fuel exploded. A desperate effort was then made by surviving crew members to bring the damaged and endangered vessel to the surface. But just two and one quarter minutes later, a second catastrophic blast with a force of two tons of TNT blew the bow apart when the torpedo warhead detonated, and sea water plunged in. That massive explosion sent the Kursk to the bed of the Barents Sea, where it had been participating in summer exercises.

This, according to American spying activities, appears to be what happened. But while that Saturday morning brought the end for all on board, for relatives, friends and a news-aware Russian working class, it was to become the beginning of a tragic drama of common solidarity, and a striking demonstration of the power of a largely unrestricted post-Soviet media.

For families of Kursk submariners, energetic media probing of the tragedy exposed official deceit, misinformation and confusion. After two days of silence, the navy said there had been a “malfunction”. That the Kursk had “descended voluntarily”. That “contact with the crew had been established”. That “everyone on board is alive”. That a “foreign” submarine caused a collision. Perhaps worst of all, relatives and the public were led to believe that the Russian navy was making serious attempts to save any survivors by sending down their own submersible rescue craft. But it transpired that this was futile from the outset, because deep-sea divers were essential to help guide this craft by hand over the Kursk’s rescue hatch so the mini-sub could properly lock on to it, and the cash-strapped navy had disbanded all these specially trained diving teams.

Four days were lost before Putin asked for outside help, and days more before it arrived. Even an agonising wait by sailors’ families to learn whether or not their own fathers, brothers and sons were on board the Kursk only ended when the tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published the names, after bribing a high-ranking navy officer with 18,000 roubles (£450) for the list stamped “Top Secret”. There was also public anger that president Putin remained on holiday in Sochi on the Black Sea, while loved ones were imagined to be struggling for air as the submarine’s oxygen ran out.

The reality was that the huge onboard explosion killed most of the Kursk’s crew quickly, though it is possible some survived a short while longer in the stern, before the entire submarine became flooded due to structural damage making watertightness impossible. The pressure of deep water outside the submarine would have caused more blast energy to be directed internally, causing increased hull and bulkhead damage.

To make matters worse for Putin—who won the presidential election by portraying himself as a revitalising strongman who would improve Russia’s armed forces, crack down on crime and restore stability—August brought not only the Kursk’s sinking. A terrorist bomb exploded beforehand in Moscow killing 12 and maiming dozens. And afterwards, the capital’s prestigious Ostankino television tower caught fire, disrupting the viewing habits of ten million Muscovites. These events together, and Russian journalists’ recent ability to comment freely no doubt account for much of the media’s fierce and sustained criticism of the President, but many were already unhappy with the leader because of a crackdown on media organisations which had followed negative comments about Russian fighting in Chechnya—something which damaged the government during the last such war.

Furthermore, some media barons and business tycoons no longer see eye to eye with Putin, and may be concerned that a politician they empowered and made their puppet, just might harbour a notion to sever his strings. Putin has sought to blame the “oligarchs” for the Kursk tragedy, accusing them of having robbed “the army, navy and the country blind”. If the public, who already despise the super-rich businessmen, can be led to believe that their greed has crippled and endangered the armed forces, then Putin will have scapegoats, popular and military support, and the power to exert more control over privatised assets at the very least. Perhaps even order a change of ownership if so inclined.

Orgy of self-enrichment

In the eight years since Russia followed Western advice from free market touts to establish a private banking system and start privatising the state assets, a small number of people with links to officialdom became phenomenally rich. During Boris Yeltsin’s early years in power, they were preoccupied with making money. But as the 1996 presidential election approached, Russia’s new capitalists grew fearful that their orgy of self-enrichment might end. The “Communist” party candidate had a real chance of winning, so they poured money into both Yeltsin’s campaign and an anti-“Communist” media offensive, and successfully got their man into the Kremlin. When Yeltsin was coming to the end of his reign, and was intent on protecting himself and his family’s sizeable amount of grasped wealth, he had to choose both a loyalist successor and someone acceptable to the nabobs.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who hours after becoming Prime Minister was asked by the Kommersant newspaper about his relationship with the asset-owning rich, and replied “I have never quarreled with any of the oligarchs”. Clearly, someone who knew where real power then lay, and who he had to curry favour with in order to improve his career prospects. But having achieved presidential power, Putin has sought to strengthen the Russian state and reassert Kremlin control of its 89 regions and republics, where nepotism, corruption and crime abound.

One of his first decrees ordered the resurrection of compulsory military training. More money has been promised to the armed forces. He has expressed admiration of the KGB, and last August appointed a former KGB colonel as Prime Minister. He recently unveiled a plaque honouring Russia’s war heroes which had Stalin’s name listed foremost. A commemorative coin bearing Stalin’s face has also been issued, and a new bust of the Soviet tyrant is planned for Russia’s main war memorial. This increased militarisation of society, tributes to authoritarianism, centralising of power, bonding with military chiefs and tendency to see others as being either state or anti-state—just as in the USSR era when everything was categorised as Soviet or anti-Soviet—might mean President Putin has a desire to return to Stalinist-style oppressive rule. If so, the power and privileges presently enjoyed by the oligarchs could shift Putin’s way, as he and his own associates became the next capitalist elite.

But is there not a contradiction between Putin’s expressed detest of the oligarchs, and his simultaneous commitment to improve the armed forces? After all, just whose valuable assets and territory is the Russian military defending and favouring these days? Which brings us to why armed forces and their barbaric weaponry even exist in a supposedly civilised intelligence-valued twenty-first century. It is because, just as governments compete economically to help their own nation’s businesses (keeping wages, taxes and welfare low, weakening trade unions etc), so they must compete militaristically, if they are to avoid others obtaining easy commercial advantages through armed intimidation and attack. Hence, 500 odd submarines from different countries lurk and stealthily traverse the world’s oceans today.

Training for tomorrow’s wars

What were those “exercises” the Kursk was taking part in actually for, if not training to fight tomorrow’s wars which today’s capitalism make a serious possibility? It is true that by strengthening the armed forces, Putin can also gain some electoral advantage from nationalistic prestige and pride engendered in the population, but the overriding purpose of military units and armaments is to assist the possessors of productive assets. Witness Uncle Sam’s ability to inflict the greatest level of death and destruction of all, which has meant that American capital can—does get—what it wants in the global market.

As for the Kursk, much press comment concentrated on how, after becoming a basket-case economy, Russia now has very little money to safely maintain its armed forces or decommission the growing armada of rusting nuclear submarines lying in ports of the Kola peninsula in north-west Russia. But this implies that much more cash would improve things. But is having a greater number of efficient nuclear warships in service, ready to deliver mass murder when so ordered, and enriched uranium from old sub reactors recycled into new nuclear weaponry, really a better situation? Far better to remove what brings about these killing machines and the instructions to use them.

However Putin rules in the future, the Russian people will continue to suffer from exploitation, poverty, deprivation, early deaths and assorted other troubles—including further dead sailors, soldiers and pilots. They and their weaponry only exist because there is minority ownership and control of manufacturing, utilities, natural resources and the like. What a few possess—and benefit greatly from—they wish to defend, capitalise on and add to through intimidation, and violent force if necessary. Hence, the reason murderous vessels like the Kursk come to be made. So when Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, said “I will strive all my life to look in the eyes of the man who caused this tragedy” (Independent, 23 August), he need only locate and peer into the nearest mirror, for as a military leader acting together with others in maintaining minority possession of productive property, he certainly carries some of the blame.

Because there are groups of these capitalists all over the world, there are groups of armed forces all over the world, and populations are encouraged to see one another as “us” and “them”, or “the enemy”. One day, you have John Spellar, Britain’s armed forces minister, saying that “we” are sending a rescue vehicle to the Barents Sea because Britons “are delighted to be able to assist in trying to save sailors from an awful fate and one that is of concern to all right thinking people all around the world” (Guardian, 17 August). Another day, another year, and “us” and “them” may be unleashing great death and destruction upon each other. Surely it is “of concern to all right thinking people” that we avoid that particular “awful fate”?

So we can, by disempowering all the presidents, the admirals, the generals, the ministers, the tycoons and any other minority who wants ownership and control of resources and people, choosing instead to possess and run these means of living ourselves. No more propertied class. No more leaders. No more us and them. No more Kursks.

Max Hess

A century of progress? (2011)

From the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers are still being killed in fires in garment factories because of locked doors.

March 25th will be the centenary of the greatest workplace disaster, prior to 9/11, in America’s history – the infamous fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. Because of a locked door, 146 people died, most of whom jumped to their deaths on the street nine storeys below, obviously preferring a quick and painless end over being burned to death.

The Triangle Company occupied the top three floors of the ten-storey Asch building at the intersection of Washington Place and Greene Street in Greenwich Village. Architect Joseph Asch had boasted his building was fire-proof, which structurally it was. This didn’t mean everything in it was.

No one knows exactly what started the fire, but the most likely explanation was a cigarette end that had not been extinguished, was thrown into a barrel of unused clothing material. Smoking was prohibited for the obvious reason that the materials were flammable. Some of the cutters constantly defied this ban, believing themselves to be a cut above the other employees (no pun intended) and as such, thought the law didn’t apply to them. Workplace snobbery being another of the many ways capitalism divides worker against worker.

The fire began around 4:45 p.m. which was quitting time for the near 500 employees. Factory manager, Sam Bernstein, the brother-in-law of one of the owners, Max Blanck, attempted to douse the flames rather than sound the alarm, an action that cost many lives.

The fire, which began on the eighth floor, sped rapidly to the ninth and tenth, cotton being very flammable. Many did escape, some in the elevators (a few even threw themselves on top of it) and some made it to the roof. Ladders were extended from a nearby building to the roof.

Among those who scaled them were the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, (betcha couldn’t see that one coming.)

Twenty four died on the fire escape, which did not extend to the ground and was too flimsy to hold that much weight and collapsed.

Though the fire department was called and arrived quickly and extinguished the blaze in thirty minutes, their ladders could only reach as high as the sixth floor. Those who died did so because the door on the Washington Place side of the ninth floor was locked. Controversy raged between whether it was locked to prevent people leaving early or to make them leave by the Greene Street door, then enveloped in flames. The usual procedure was, when they left by the Greene Street door, they would have their handbags checked to see they were not taking home products they had made. In other words, the company had to protect their legal theft as opposed to illegal theft. Whatever the reason for the locked door it made no difference to the deceased. Their choice was death by fire, or jumping.

Most of them were young immigrant women from Italy and the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Though no one knows what their thoughts were, it’s possible that Jewish girls, having seen in the pogroms, what fire could do to their bodies, jumped so they would be identifiable. Those who remained in the building were identified by a shoe or a lock of hair, or jewellery; six were never identified.

Nothing should have been surprising about the fire which was a tragedy waiting to happen, especially at a time where there was so little workplace safety legislation in effect in America.

In the early 20th century, approximately 40,000 people lost their lives every year to workplace injuries: in mines, foundries, factories and on railroads. What made the Triangle fire sensational is the fact that so many died so quickly, so horrifically and in America’s most populated city.

For three months officialdom did nothing about it except point fingers. State governor, John Dix, said he was “powerless”, an amazing comment, which was interpreted as, “I don’t care.” Mayor, Bill Gaynor, told his secretary to deal with it, who then referred the matter to the Fire Chief, Ted Croker. This worthy had risen to power by the patronage of his uncle, Richard Croker, once head of Tammany Hall, the most powerful political organisation in America. Croker blamed the Building Department, who blamed the Fire Department.

State Labour Commissioner, John Williams, said it didn’t come under his jurisdiction and building owner, Joseph Asch, said he had fulfilled all his obligations. Harris and Blanck said the doors were never locked during working hours. The head of the reformist Socialist Party of America, Meyer London, sneered that, whilst safety reform should be enacted, it probably wouldn’t be, and that nothing would be done about the tragedy.

The press understandably demanded that someone be held accountable. William Randolph Hearst, even created his own panel of experts in engineering, real estate and fire prevention to suggest new laws for safer workplaces for his paper, American, to advocate.

For a time, it looked like London would be proved right, but a young man, ambitious for political office, District Attorney, Charles Whitman, persevered in his attempts to prosecute the owners.

Whitman interviewed survivors and hired a detective to go to the ninth floor and find the lock of the door that opened onto the Washington Place stairs. This lock showed it had not been opened, whereupon the detective, Barry Flood, secured an indictment against Blanck and Harris, whom he arrested.

The defendants obtained the services of Manhattan’s most successful attorney, Max Steur, who had himself once been a garment worker.

Steur, knowing he couldn’t prove the door was unlocked, resorted to cheap tricks like examining the handbags of survivors to see how many garments they could possibly have smuggled out. This was done in attempt to create sympathy among the jurors and to show the reasoning for keeping it locked.

Blanck and Harris, naturally enough, said they weren’t aware of any doors being locked during working hours. Steur emphasised it would be ridiculous if they were locked, considering the constant coming and goings of delivery people, errand boys and salesmen etc. All this was ludicrous when one considers that, when a fire prevention expert inspected the premises in 1909, he noticed the door on the Washington Place side was locked during working hours. Survivors, themselves, had said Harris was constantly checking to see the door was locked.

Judge Thomas Grain, charged the jury to decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether or not the defendants were aware the door was locked during working hours. The jury concluded they were not aware of it, so they were acquitted.

The “innocent” partners successfully filed insurance claims that worked out to about $400.00 for every dead worker.

Civil lawsuits were brought against the owners by the relatives of the deceased, but since Steur again defended them, nobody got a penny. Instead, twenty three relatives managed to get the princely sum of $75.00 each from an insurance company.

It is of small, if any, consolation to the relatives of the victims that the fortunes of the Triangle Company gradually declined, and by 1918 had ceased to exist. By 1920, Harris and Blanck split up, neither being prosperous after.

A person who took a great deal of interest was Frances Perkins, herself an eyewitness to the fire. Fifty years later she unveiled a memorial plaque to the victims, at the sight of the tragedy. Perkins became America’s first female cabinet minister, when President Roosevelt appointed her Minister of Labor in his New Deal government. This proved women could run capitalism just as incapably as men.

During the century since the fire, laws concerning workplace safely have been passed and enforced, till by 2006, (the last year this author could get figures for), only two percent of all deaths by accidents in the US were workplace related. As necessary as such legislation is, it is nevertheless merely an improvement within capitalism. But, as long as capitalism lasts, such events will occur. The fact they occur less frequently is no reason to defend capitalism

Obviously, they will happen more in countries where safety laws either don’t exist or are not enforced. In Bangkok in 1993, nearly 200 workers died in a toy factory, where the doors had been locked by their bosses to prevent them from taking toys home. There are other examples, especially from Bangladesh (see boxes).

Despite the tremendous technological advances we’ve seen, life hasn’t changed much under capitalism. Nor, can it be argued, such events are history in capitalism’s greatest power. In 1991, in Hamlet, North Carolina, 25 people died in a fire at a poultry plant, also because of locked doors.

With the profit motive being the main determining factor in production, it would be naive and idealistic to expect capitalists and politicians, who attempt to administrate capitalism, to care. Perhaps, nobody said it better than software capitalist and investor, Kevin O’Leary, who expressed his feelings on altruism by saying, “The emotional tie that I have at the end of the month is when I count the cash.” He also told a prospective business partner, “There’s something nasty about you and I like it.”

Socialists cannot say with any degree of certainty that there will be no workplace deaths in a socialist society. The exact nature of work and the workplace will be determined by the needs of society and the technology available. What socialists can say, is that with the abolition of money and therefore the profit motive, the very death blood of capitalism, priority will be given to workplace health in general and safety in particular. Events like the Triangle Fire will never occur again.

Steve Shannon

See Also:

June 2013 Socialist Standard, Capitalism Kills: The Bangladeshi Garment Factory Disaster

The Politics of Fire (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Friday 20 November in Windsor Castle a curtain caught fire in the Queen’s Private Chapel, probably ignited by a spotlight recently installed to illuminate the altar and art work. The fire quickly spread throughout the north-east wing devastating “The Grand Reception Room” and “The State Dining Room”. Fire-fighters rushed to the scene to carry out a prearranged fire-fighting and salvage plan. They were drawn from the surrounding counties to save this “loveliest of palaces"—an ancient fortress overlooking the Thames. The estimated cost of restoration is put at about £60 million.

Fire is a violent chemical reaction involving heat, oxygen and fuel in which heat and light are produced. If you remove either the heat, the oxygen or the fuel, combustion will stop. This is the basis for controlling fire which early hunter-gatherers must have learned for themselves. They discovered it could be used to keep wild animals away. They learned to cook with it and in time how to “fire" clay pots to make them hard and leak-proof. They smelted metals to make tools and weapons. The evolution of the tool has enabled different sources of fuel to be used. First wood and animal fats, then peat and coal, later, mineral oils and natural gas.

To successfully use fire combustible materials had to be collected and brought to the dwelling. In a communal environment this arduous task would have been shared and the energy expended would be offset by the use to which the fuel was put. With the advent of trading, fuel could be bartered for other essential goods, especially in areas where the fuel was scarce.

Capitalism has turned fire and its fuels into a commodity, possessing like all other commodities the value imparted to it by all the workers who have worked on it. Today, fuels like coal, oil and gas are all big sources of profit for those who own their production. However, under capitalism access to the fuels of fire required for heating our dwellings and cooking our food is only available to those who can afford them. Fuel will be provided only at a profit and this is why every winter the elderly and the poor cannot afford to heat their homes.

Protecting property

Once a fire is started it can spread very quickly, fanned by currents of air and fed by combustible materials. Obviously some sort of organized method was required to deal with it. Up until the Great Fire of London in 1666 fire-fighting was undertaken

by groups of volunteers carrying buckets of water, usually led by the occupier of the burning property. However, the Great Fire destroyed 13,000 homes and caused massive losses for the commercial insurance companies. In 1667 a businessman named Dr Barbon set up an insurance company to cover houses. This lucrative idea soon spread and rival insurance companies were soon competing with each other. A house insured with a particular company had to display a company plaque called a “firemark” on its outside wall. When a fire started and the firemen were summoned, invariably by shouting, they would arrive and check the plaque. If the house was covered by their company they would fight the fire. If not it was left for their competitors or it burned to the ground. Intense rivalry existed between these companies and they would often impede each other on the way to a fire.

In 1833 an Act of Parliament empowered local councils to purchase fire appliances and equipment out of the rates. Unable to compete, the private insurance brigades joined the town brigades or disbanded. In 1938 the Fire Brigade Act required local councils to maintain efficient fire brigades and set up a national fire service. In 1947 only county councils could become fire authorities and the 1974 local government reorganization led to the system that exists today. A decentralized service of 63 virtually autonomous brigades, 54 in England and Wales, 8 in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland.

Fire brigades are funded by the county councils as are the local ambulance services. Councils raise the money from local taxes in addition to what is allocated them by central government. In an attempt to reduce the cost the right-wing theorists at the Adam Smith Institute have recommended the merger of the two services:

  The report claims extra efficiency would be achieved by closer co-operation and cross-training in the emergency services. It says amalgamation would also generate substantial income by selling redundant buildings. (Daily Telegraph 7 December).

These reforms are supported by some personnel in the services who believe that the merger will bring in much needed money and equipment.

Within capitalism two mutually dependent social classes have evolved. The capitalist or ruling class is made up of the owners of the means of production, landowners and financiers who derive their income from the surplus value created in production. This source of profit is produced by the working class who own no productive resources apart from their labour-power. On a personal level workers may partly own their homes or small pieces of land but this does not alter their social position. They must still exchange their labour-power for a wage or salary in order to purchase the goods they need to survive and bring up their families. It is in the capitalists' interest to keep wages as low as possible.

For capitalism to perpetuate itself it must provide a relatively safe environment for the exploitation of the working class to take place in. The National Health Service was set up to ensure that the population of workers are fit enough to work. Similarly, the emergency services are provided to ensure that workers are safe at their places of work and in their hours of recuperation. As safe as is profitable.

Profits before safety

Although fire safety is in the capitalists’ own interest it is not a very high priority for individual businesses, especially in a recession. This is because unless they have a fire they will not get any financial return on the money they have spent on precautions. In fact many individual capitalists see fire precautions as a burden and a drain on their profits.

Art by George Meddemmen

The Daily Telegraph (5 December) reported that Nuswift, makers of fire protection equipment, had seen their profits drop from £11.3m to £2.52m in the first half of that year. Clearly their equipment is not in demand. The Fire Services Act of 1947 empowers the local fire authorities to carry out inspections of commercial premises to ensure that they meet the standards required by all the relevant fire safely requirements passed by law. Despite this external pressure the capitalists' requirement to increase profits invariably comes first.

A report published by the National Audit Office, last December criticizes industry on a number of points. Only £2m was spent on fire prevention publicity in 1991 despite the fact that deaths have risen from 430 to 740 a year since 1960. Insurance losses from fire now run at about £1 billion a year. The bill to the National Health Service for treating 11,000 burns cases a year (3.000 in 1960) is at least £40m. The report goes further. Sixty percent of deaths a year occur in the home despite the increase in the number of smoke alarms fitted. However those most at risk like the elderly are the least likely to buy alarms. Those over 80 years of age are eight times more likely to die in a fire than people aged 55 to 64. The NAO report recommends the free distribution of smoke alarms.

For a safer world

The technological means to ensure that every home and workplace is as safe as possible already exist. But the workers do not have access to this technology unless they can afford it. Today under capitalism how many homes have even got an extinguisher or fire blanket—the workers just cannot afford them. It does not have to be like this. Once we recognise our role as wage-slaves under capitalism and that our labour is the source of all wealth, we can use the democratic process to establish socialism by making technology and resources the common property of all.

Fire precautions could then be an integral part of every home. All building construction and household furniture could be constructed with fire-resisting materials. Every place of work should have the best warning and fire-fighting equipment installed as a matter of course. Everyone could acquire a working knowledge of First Aid and basic fire-fighting. One more avoidable tragic death due to fire is one too many.

A.W.E.

Pathfinders: Two fingers to the virus (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two fingers to the virus

The continuing spikes in Covid cases around the world, in places where it was deemed vanquished or at least in retreat, starts to resemble the physical appearance of the virus itself, with little trumpets erupting everywhere from its spherical surface. But what’s also erupting is the trumpet fanfares of success as countries like India and Russia announce the mass production of vaccines they have supposedly developed for their home markets. How have Modi and Putin succeeded in leaving the rest of the world straggling behind them? Do they have better scientists than anyone else? Did they just get lucky?

In the case of India, it’s just political spin from the nation’s prime administer. “Not one, not two, as many as three coronavirus vaccines are being tested in India,” Modi announced with a flourish in Delhi in August, as if announcing the breakthrough of the century. But you can describe anything as a vaccine and announce tests on it. “Along with mass-production, the roadmap for distribution of vaccine to every single Indian in the least possible time is also ready,” he added with grandiose pomp but again without really saying anything.

Russia’s president Putin went further, however, by announcing that a Covid vaccine had been medically approved and would go into mass production by October. They’ve called it Sputnik V, as a two-finger reminder to the western world that Russia was first into space in 1957 with the Sputnik satellite. Ignoring calls for a global combined effort, the Russian Health Ministry has released no details of the Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials it ran last month. As for Phase 3 trials, apparently they didn’t run one.

Vaccine trials go in three distinct phases to check three distinct things: 1) will it kill or damage anyone (small test only), 2) does it do anything useful in any way at all (medium sample), and 3) does it do what we actually need it to do (big sample)? Paracetamol would pass the first two phases of clinical trials for the coronavirus. So would a gin and tonic. Almost anything would, apart from Trump’s bleach. Phase 3 is the one that matters. Without that, you’ve basically got nothing. Or you’ve got worse than nothing, because you could make Covid stronger (New Scientist, 12 August). Diseases and drugs vie in a constant arms race. If you attack a disease with a drug that’s meant to kill it, and the disease wins, it’s like Popeye getting a dose of spinach.

Vaccines are already under attack in social media, with anti-vaxxer messages outnumbering pro-vaccine posts on average by five to one, and a recent survey suggesting that, even if a vaccine is produced in the UK, up to 50 percent of the population might refuse to take it (New Scientist, 12 August). Let the idiots die, you might think, the world has enough fools, but their anti-vaxxer idiocy could kill others if it prevents society vaccinating its way to the long-hoped-for herd immunity. And any vaccine toted as effective which turns out to be the opposite will only strengthen the antivaxxer lobby and risk extending the pandemic.

Of course the Russians might be right about their vaccine, though the lack of transparency is not encouraging. Even by capitalist standards, Putin is not a team player. He will certainly be hoping the vaccine works, so he can use it as an armlock on the West, just as he did with gas supplies to Ukraine. Things in Belarus have been kicking off lately, with the repulsive and patriarchal troll Lukashenko stage-managing yet another 80 percent election ‘victory’ despite only scoring 3 percent support in polls, and calling on Moscow for support in the face of the gigantic social protests that followed. A working vaccine would be just the leverage (Ras)Putin needs if he’s considering an empire-building intervention into Belarus, as seemed a possibility when this went to press.

Big Bang in Beirut

The August warehouse fire in Beirut had already attracted a lot of media attention. As the smoke plumed up over the dock area, volunteer firefighters and a paramedic went in on the ground. On a balcony blocks away, a French architect live-streamed the fire to his Facebook friends, a bit of excitement on an otherwise dull day. Little flashes in the smoke suggested fireworks going off, which added spice to the event. Then a stupendous explosion, and a shockwave flashed outwards, ringed by a fat white condensation cloud that was eerily redolent of a small nuclear detonation. Cladding and glass flew like autumn leaves off apartment blocks across the city. The fire team was killed instantly. The architect, who thought he was at a safe distance, was also killed, and two hundred or so other people besides. The docks were obliterated, three hospitals destroyed, ships flipped, sunk or flung in pieces onto the land. The blast measured 3.3 on the Richter scale despite the force going mostly upwards. It was heard 160 miles away. It has been listed as the fifth most powerful, artificial, non-nuclear explosion in history.

Sympathetic city halls across the world draped themselves in the Lebanese flag, including Tel Aviv, though Israel and Lebanon are technically at war. As the fire burned out over the blast area, the recriminations started. How could nearly 3,000 tonnes of explosive ammonium nitrate have been kept for six years in a port warehouse without proper safety precautions, despite numerous warnings and six letters to judges, and without residents knowing about it? The conspiracy vultures descended to feast, but the simple answer was that people fucked up. The Lebanese cabinet resigned. The country’s food supply, in a pandemic, had been virtually destroyed.

Ammonium nitrate is quite like potassium nitrate, or saltpetre, and is popular because it’s cheap to make, good for fertilisers and, if you mix it with fuel oil, excellent for making bombs. Terrorists love it for this reason, which is why capitalist states are keen to phase it out. It’s not supposed to explode by itself but if you don’t store it right it will do, and has done repeatedly, killing thousands. Of the ten biggest explosions mentioned above, it was responsible for four.

We can’t say people in socialism wouldn’t use ammonium nitrate. We don’t know. But we can pretty much guarantee that they wouldn’t stuff thousands of tonnes of it next to flammable material in a forgotten warehouse for six years just because of a legal dispute over who should pay the port fees after the original shipowner went bankrupt. There are bound to be accidents in socialism too, but they wouldn’t be because of arguments between jobsworths about who owed money to whom.

Paddy Shannon

Running Commentary: Cause for alarm (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cause for alarm

A recent report by the Greater London Council makes quite clear that those who control London’s fire brigade have more than one eye upon their balance sheets!

  The cost of running the Brigade has risen considerably in recent years — from the net revenue estimate of £53.2 million in 1978-9 to nearly £65.3 million in 1979-80. Of the £65.3 million estimate for 1979-80 staff costs account for almost £54.2 million, emphasising the labour-intensive nature of the Brigade. (The Future Development of the London Fire Brigade -Discussion Document).

The GLC has responded to the government’s concern to cut public expenditure by reducing the number of operational appliances, reducing the level of manning (from that settled between the FBU and the GLC in 1974) and proposing to shut down the River Station at Greenwich. All this is bound to result in inferior fire services. The reduced number of firemen and fire appliances will affect the speed with which emergency calls can be dealt with. And emergency fire calls in London are increasing: in 1965 there were 39,566, by 1974 the figure had increased to 87,307, it was 111,520 in the drought year of 1976 and the London Fire Brigade Management Study Group have projected that by 1985 the number of emergency calls per year will reach 168,000. Is this the time to start cutting services?

Lord Denning, speaking in the Court of Appeal in 1971, stated that: “The snatching of a fellow human’s life from a terrifying death may easily turn on a quarter of a minute—a matter of seconds”.

In the same case, Joseph Milner, then Chief Fire Officer of London, pointed out that: “It is well known in the Fire Service that the speed of attack is crucial to the control and extinguishment of a fire, and that the driver of a fire appliance knows that the risk to life and property is increased by any delay in getting to a fire.”

Workers in the fire service will freely tell you that cuts spell delays. In London there are extra reasons why services will be deficient. Firstly, the fire cover for the new Docklands Industrial complex has been reduced, meaning that less money has been allocated to protecting the massive industrial area than was advised by fire experts. Secondly, the expanding tourist industry involves the existence of thousands of hotels and these are notoriously prone to catch fire. Faced with the need to send fire appliances to a burning warehouse containing millions of pounds worth of commodities and to attend a small fire in a council flat, if there are reduced services, priorities will have to be made.

If readers are in any doubt about the callousness of the capitalist administrators towards human life they need only think back to the 1977 Firemen’s strike. Remember how they brought in inexperienced blacklegs from the army to break the strike? Remember how the Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, refused to meet the wishes of the FBU? Remember how the media tried to portray striking firemen —who only the week before were shown as dedicated, brave men-as irresponsible, anti-social militants? It is quite possible that declining conditions in the fire brigade will cause the FBU to call another strike. If they do, and if lives are lost as a result, workers should not condemn the firemen for their necessary participation in the class struggle. They should blame the social system which leads to strikes and other events which result in public suffering.

What next in Poland

Socialists welcome the heroic efforts of the working class in Poland to achieve trade union and other rights. Freedom of speech and freedom to organise politically are essential for the existence of a socialist party. But the chief essential must be a working class which understands and wants socialism. Sadly, that is not yet present in Poland (any more than in Britain).

In an interview in the Guardian (3.11.80) “Eva, a leading dissident intellectual, was asked what sort of society does Solidarity really want?” Eva hesitated. “I suppose people differ, but very few of us could be called socialists at all. We would even welcome multi-nationals and big combines. In theory we would not mind having capitalism back —not on the American pattern but like Sweden or Denmark.”

It has to be admitted that while people like Eva imagine that they could have capitalism “back” —as though Poland has ever had anything other than a society of wage slaves producing goods not for use but for sale on a market —the idea of socialism hasn’t yet got off the ground.

Jesus Napoleon Brezhnev

Those readers old enough to remember the days of Stalin will readily recall the sycophancy which surrounded the Great Leader. After his death, the Bolshevik gang went through the motions of deploring the Cult of Personality — of which they had all been the leading exponents. They are now building, at a place called Malaya Zemlya —the scene of a battle which nobody has heard of — a vast monument which will show the great martial deeds of the present Stalin, Brezhnev, who indeed has been created a Marshall.

The battle was of minor consequence but is now being upgraded to the rank of a Stalingrad as a turning point in the war. Brezhnev’s part was unknown at the time but his heroism is now the subject of a book which won the top literary prize in Russia. Real authentic stuff, that was. Brezhnev wrote it himself.

A song about the battle is now frequently played on Moscow Radio. It is not made clear if Brezhnev also wrote the words and music and performs it at the Bolshoi in person. According to a newspaper called Babinsky Rabochy (which no doubt exists even if you’ve never heard of it), Brezhnev is “the outstanding Marxist-Leninist political figure and statesman of the modern age”. No, he didn’t write that himself, there being no shortage of Communist hacks (this one was called Geidar Alieyv) to do the jobs for this latter day Stalin.

Inflation again

One charge that cannot be laid against Enoch Powell, with regard to his views on inflation, is that he is not ruthlessly logical. Despite being no supporter of trade unions, he is quite prepared to admit, even proclaim from the rooftops, that you cannot blame inflation on workers’ demanding higher wages. Speaking at a conference in London on 14 November he denounced the new 6 per cent limit on pay rises in the local government sector as “folly”. After saying that governments alone cause inflation by increasing the money supply (a view the present Tory government is supposed to accept), he went on:

  On that view, pay rises generally, like other price increases generally, are not the cause but the inevitable consequence of inflation, and you might as well try to stop the rain by screaming at people not to get wet as to try to combat inflation by telling pay and prices not to respond to it. (The Times, 15 November)

If the rate of price rises has been falling in recent months, this is partly because the government has been inflating the currency less (for the government is, despite what it says, still inflating the currency) but also partly because in a slump such as capitalism is now going through the general price level tends to fall.

Editorial: In Place of Wishes (1988)

Editorial from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year at this time an arbitrary line is drawn across our lives. It has as much mysticism about it as any religion. On one side of the line lies the Old Year with its mistakes, its problems, its inadequacies. On the other the New Year beckons us, with its pristine sanity, enlightenment, happiness. It is a time to make resolutions that the next twelve months will be innocent of the disfigurements of the past twelve. Some people mark the occasion by getting drunk, to lubricate the process of acting towards others with warmth and respect. Others may rely on the collective hysteria of the occasion to intoxicate them. Happy New Year, they wish each other. It’s probably not all insincere, either.

But powerful as alcoholic poisoning and popular delusions can be there is an amnesiac scale about the event which is positively staggering. For does life really get better from year to year for the millions of people who wish to each other that it should? The millions who snatch the short holiday to pretend that they are something other than the social class which, although productive and useful, is exploited, repressed and deceived?

That question was what actually dominated the election last June. Thatcher and her crew energetically told us that things were not only getting better but would carry on like that, as if the Tories will never rest until they have drenched us all in prosperity. Enough workers were impressed by this campaign, shrewdly aimed as it was, to send the Iron Lady back to Number Ten.

It is likely that the Tories won a lot of votes through their schemes to enable workers to buy shares in the privatised industries. This whole idea, with its elaborately buoyant publicity, rested on the assumption that the Stock Market is a casino where share prices always go up, so that workers who borrowed a little money to buy a few shares could then sell them quickly and so make a small profit. This illusion — that the class structure of capitalism had been radically changed by Norman Tebbit was badly damaged by the stock market crash, which catapulted distraught yuppies into a position of media-dominance. In fact, a falling stock market also offers the possibility of making money — but in a way not usually open to penurious workers.

It is worth mentioning this if only because a popular response to any criticism of Thatcherite Britain is that the critics are motivated by a septic envy. There is, apparently, an opulent gravy train on the move for those who are economically nimble enough to climb aboard. The economically disabled have only themselves to blame. But is this society, which we labour under, really so carefree an arrangement? Are its critics really so devoid of material to support their arguments?

Well what, apart from the events on the Stock Exchange, happened last year? What effect did all those salutations, last January, have for us?

It was, in fact, a year of disasters in a very material sense. The crazy massacre of Hungerford cannot be explained away as an isolated mental breakdown. Michael Ryan was a man who could not answer, to his own satisfaction, the sexual, social and familial expectations of capitalism. So instead he loved his guns, his cars and his terrible fantasies. The capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise was not an accident for the ship was being sailed just as the company's balance sheet thought appropriate. At the time of writing the immediate cause of the King's Cross fire has not been made public, but emerging facts have shown up the reductions in vital staff and the tardiness in replacing dangerously outdated equipment, in the cause of reducing costs and so maximising profit.

Although as a disaster it is rather less dramatic, the problem of the homeless grew worse, with the numbers of families with nowhere to live increasing as their chances of finding anywhere within a reasonable time decreased. Young workers have been coerced into accepting government approved work or courses under pain of being cut off from state benefit. The government's discovery that state benefits can be cut by changing their name and the conditions under which they can be claimed brings memories of the special indignities heaped on the unemployed during the 1930s. Finally, in face of the official statistics which tell us that it is not happening, the waiting lists of workers who need treatment in hospital grew longer so that some die while they are waiting and babies are prevented from having desperately needed operations through a lack of specialised nurses who have been driven out of the work through their paltry wages. Even the consultants, contemplating the beds kept empty by the priority of conforming to a budget, have been moved to make their unequivocal protests.

There was no happier prospect abroad. At the end of the year Bob Geldof was flying back to Ethiopia to ask why, after all that effort and expenditure, millions have to suffer an agonising, degrading death by starvation. Those sickening pictures of dying babies, too sick even to take their mother's milk, are condemnation enough of capitalism in themselves. The Gulf War continued to consume its fearsome human diet, there is slaughter in Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan and the brutality of South Africa's racist regime does not lessen. The cold cynicism of capitalist politics has been exposed by the Irangate affair, which cannot be hushed over by even Reagan's consummate acting skills. He may yet be saved by the diversion of a treaty to abolish medium-range nuclear missiles which, even if it should ever be fully implemented, would still leave us living in a world with more than enough destructive power to kill us all several times over.

No, it was not a Happy New Year. Neither was 1986, 1985, 1984 . . . We shall need to do more than wish that things will get better. We have the power to change the world and the ability to run it in the interests of the human race. And the reasons for that are all too obvious.

Between the Lines: Keep the tears flowing (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep the tears flowing

Television thrives on tears. Tears of distress make good news disaster stories; tears of sentimentality bring in a few quid for Terry Wogan's annual evening of pseudo-benevolent piety. Children In Need (BBC1. Friday 27 November, all evening); tears of anger, such as those of victims of so-called terrorists' attack, are easier images than those of explanation. It is a cruel and harsh observation to make, but the facts indicate that cheers go out in the TV centres every time news of a new cause for tears and mass suffering comes in through the teleprinter. One sees the look of excited expectation upon the faces of these tasteless, trivialising newsreaders; "And news is just coming in of an air disaster in Manchester — it looks like as many as twenty could be dead — but keep watching, we'll do our best to push the figures up — and then we'll be the first on the scene when the injured are persuaded to show their ugly wounds before the cameras — as a matter of fact, a little birdy tells me that we might just have first degree burn on a little kid to flash before you. so keep your eyes on the screen and then well show you the ritual tour of the overcrowded casualty wards by The Royal Couple".

No, of course it is not true that TV producers actually take a sadistic pleasure in seeing workers suffer, but there can be no doubt that tears make good TV for them and that is what they are out to make. One recalls that awful day when cameras showed the burning alive of those numerous workers who stood on the unsafe terraces at Bradford Football Club and perished. Of course, the commentators were genuinely moved. But something else was going on. TV uses disaster for a particular social function. Firstly, it is intended to say to viewers. "Look at these poor sods: you might be poor, insecure and depressed, but at least you're not the ones being burned alive. There's always someone worse off than you. you know". How long have workers been deterred from taking real action to solve our own misery now on the grounds that to do so would be wrong, for first we must attend to the miseries of those who are worse off than us?

Secondly, there is something inherently irrational about tears. To be sure, it is psychologically very useful to have a good cry when misery becomes too much to bear — and it is incredible the number of men who are afraid to do so, not least because of the TV imagery which shows that "men don't cry". But tears are an expression, not an explanation; a cry and not a speech. And TV likes to catch the workers at our most inarticulate and animalistic. It confirms the basic Christian doctrine that try as we might to pose as reasoned beings, when the Lord decides that it is disaster time (vicious swine that this legendary god must be) all we are empowered to do is weep like babies.

Thirdly, disaster allows the capitalist system to be seen as caring. That is why Margaret Thatcher is always on the scene — with cameras firmly focussed on her — when the tears are flowing. The newsreader lets us know that The Queen sends her condolences. When do these uncaring, rich parasites send their condolences to the families of the thousands of old people who die of hypothermia each winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater? But give us a nice, single, packaged disaster and we see just how caring these defenders of the system really are.

What TV does not show — or, if it ever makes moves towards doing so, it happens at late and undramatic moments — is why these tears must flow. Why did hundreds drown in the cold sea off Zeebrugge? Was it anything to do with the shipowners making huge profits out of over-packing cross-channel ferries? Why did they burn to death at Bradford? Were the owners of the football club, who allowed spectators to stand on dangerous wooden stands, not placing profit before human needs? Why did they burn to death on the escalators at King's Cross station? We do not yet know, but might it not have at least something to do with London Regional Transport's decision to divert the money it had allocated for scrapping the unsafe wooden escalators to building heavy steel barriers to stop fare dodgers?

Why are children in need, Terry Wogan? Your children will not be in need (and we are very glad to know it) because you receive millions of pounds for presenting trivia to the BBC. But is it really worth spending one evening a year indulging in a TV charity marathon which can only collect less than £10 million from the entire population of Britain when every hour the British government spends £1.5 million on arms alone? Children In Need shows a tragedy beyond the tragedy. The tragedy it tries to depict is that of large numbers of kids who need our pennies and the few quid which the worker can spare in order to alleviate their suffering. Credit where it is due: the presenters of the programme all do a very good job in showing us just how needy these kids are. just how tearful we should be. But the tragedy which transcends those tears is that we are now living in a society which is more than able to satisfy the needs of those deprived and diseased children — more than capable of allocating resources to end or alleviate as much as possible their suffering, but does not do so because of the warped logic of capitalism which must place profits before needs.

The real tragedy is that we must look at the needless waste of children's health and happiness which has been allowed to go on in a system which makes a TV show out of caring and an economic science out of saying "go away and die". When workers wake up to the sense of what capitalism is doing to us all — to the children of Ethiopia who now are pushed before the cameras so that more tear-flowing may be indulged in. led by the ever-miserable Bob Geldof — and to men, women and children across the world — when workers wake up there will be more important things to do than to weep. We can leave that to the tears of relief which will doubtlessly follow upon our self-emancipation.


Murder by law

If tears are what you fancy, then few programmes in 1987 could have had more effect than Fourteen Days In May, shown by the BBC last November. This was a documentary which would soon disabuse innocents who were under the misapprehension that racists stopped sending their victims into gas chambers after the Nazis fell from power. Not so. This extremely moving documentary told the story of a black worker from the Southern USA who was convicted to death for the alleged crime of shooting a white cop and — worst of all — raping a white woman. In the racist South nothing short of legalised murder would suffice to teach the man a lesson (there's nothing like death to teach us lessons, I always think) and in this particular state death is by gassing.

The BBC cameras showed the gas chamber being prepared by the wage slaves in uniform, and even the gassing of a rabbit on a trial run. All very sick. We watched the victim live out his final fourteen days on Death Row where he had been for eight years. We watched him hope for leniency and we watched him walk into the gas chamber. It was like watching a social system throwing up. After Johnson had been gassed to death we had a message from the producer flashed across the screen. On the night that he had allegedly committed the two crimes of which he had always pleaded innocent he had been with a black woman. This alibi went into a police station some time after his arrest and offered herself as a witness but was warned by the white cop that she had no right to interfere in their business.

Earlier the same month we were shown on Channel Four the excellent two-part documentary, Shoah, which told of the mass gassing of people by the Nazis half a century ago. Capitalism still goes on; the gas chambers are still being used; who the hell are the inhabitants of this system to call themselves civilised?

Steve Coleman