The Leader and the Labour Party (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Scarborough it was outwardly politics that were being discussed, but the Leader and his supporters were also on trial. The questions were what should be the policy and who should be the leader.

On the main resolutions decisions were reached which will hold unless and until they are reversed, but the question of leadership was not decided, though various groups which think it was are looking round for Gaitskell's successor.

On different aspects of the dominating issue of nuclear weapons there were four resolutions, and Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour Party executive were defeated on all of them, though not by large majorities. It was a severe but perhaps not yet fatal blow for Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour M.Ps, the majority of whom stood for the official policy.

A resolution was carried that “Labour policy is decided by the Party conference which is the final authority,” but the executive gave it an interpretation which seems to rob it of much of its meaning. Mr. Len Williams, the Party's National Agent, told the Conference that “the Parliamentary Labour Party” (that is, the Labour M.Ps.) is under no direction from conference or any other body. Mr. Williams said the National Executive did not wish to oppose the composite resolution if it was understood that it involved no change in the long-established principle governing relationships between conferences, National Executive and Parliamentary Party. And it had to be understood that nobody had the power to instruct the Parliamentary Party on the way it carried out its responsibilities." (Daily Herald, 5/10/60.)

And the day after the Conference Mr. Gaitskell made it clear that he has no present intention of resigning and on the contrary is preparing to overturn the Scarborough votes. Speaking in a TV interview he declared: “I regard it as absolutely vital that we should reverse this decision at next year's conference and I shall do everything I can to get that done.” (Daily Mail, 9/10/60.)

He also gave it as his opinion that the Parliamentary Labour Party will by a majority support the policy defeated by the delegates at Scarborough, the implication of which is that they will also confirm him in the Leadership, which incidentally carries with it the leadership of the Opposition at a government- provided salary of £3,000 a year.

Many Tory and Liberal newspapers, while criticising and regretting Mr. Gaitskell’s unsuccessful tactics, lavished praise on him and openly hoped that he may survive his defeat by Conference.

But whether he goes or stays the prospect for the Labour Party is bleak indeed. In the constituencies and in Parliament there will be rival groups each determined to put their point of view, and laying the Party wide open to attack from Tories and Liberals. This may, as the Liberal leaders proclaim, give them an opportunity to win back former supporters who joined the Labour Party. One political commentator, Mr. Robert McKenzie, thinks that even if Mr. Gaitskell survives for the moment it will solve nothing for the Party. His opponents will regard it as a cynical trick that Mr. Gaitskell only claims the right to defy the Trade Union block vole when it ceased to support his policy.

It is almost inevitable that the victims of this “trick” will fight on, either until they are expelled from the parliamentary party, or until Gaitskell himself is destroyed. And as the next election looms ahead, even some of those who admire Mr. Gaitskell's courage may decide that he must make way for someone who has at least a chance of reuniting the party.

(Observer, 9/10/60)

His own opinion, and hope, is that a new anti-H-Bomb Labour Party will be formed and that the Gaitskell faction will then come to terms with the Liberals.

Another danger for the Labour Party is that the conflict will lead to loss of some trade union support and may influence relationships between the Party and the TUC. Sir Thomas Williamson. Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers Union told conference that some of the branches would withdraw support from the Labour Party if the anti-nuclear resolutions were carried. (Daily Telegraph. 6/10/60.) The correspondent of The Times (7/10/60) reported that events at the conference had strengthened the already existing movement to reduce or sever the TUC’s connection with the Party.

It is an accepted convention of professional politics that the politician always claims to speak “for the people or, as he sometimes qualifies it—“for all intelligent people.” It is not so easy to decide what a Labour Party conference vote represents. Mr. Cousins claimed that he speaks “for Britain ,” a claim that Tory newspapers angrily rejected. Out of more than 22 million workers in this country, of whom 9,600,000 are in trade unions, the TUC has in its affiliated unions about 8 million, and the Labour Party 5,600,000. If Labour Party conference votes represented the views of its affiliated trade unionists and the additional 875,000 individual members who belong to local parties, cooperative societies, etc., they could be taken as representing directly the considered wishes of the majority among 6 million workers. (A large, but unknown number of the individual members also count as part of the affiliated trade union membership). But Labour Party spokesmen are well aware that their voting methods, including the trade union block vote, can produce distorted results. Even so, the claim of the Daily Herald (which now supports the H-bomb) that the great majority of Labour supporters are with them on that issue is, to say the least, somewhat surprising. According to a poll undertaken by Odhams Press Research Division “an overwhelming majority of Labour supporters and trade unionists are against the West giving up H-bombs and nuclear weapons so long as Russia keeps hers . . . . more than four out of five Labour supporters think that Britain and America should keep the bomb.” (Daily Herald, 4/10/60.)

There are, of course, sceptics who think that public opinion polls may be no more accurate than block votes.

The Guardian shares the Herald's view of the vote and roundly declared that the Conference is not democratic “while it is governed by trade union block votes. . . . There is no democracy in giving Mr. Cousins one million votes. As the world will probably see today, one or two men can turn Labour's policy upside down.” (Guardian, 5/10/60.)

Mr. Gaitskell, defeated on the H-bomb, gained the day on a policy statement which in effect discards old aims of wholesale nationalisation, and puts in their place the possibility of nationalising a few selected industries, together with the plan for a Labour Government to buy shares in companies without taking them over. It recognises that “both public and private ownership have a place in society.” Delegates speaking in opposition called it “underwriting capitalism” and the abandonment of “Socialism.” Mr. Gaitskell retorted that the proposals were just as much “Socialist” as is Nationalisation, a fact on which Socialists can heartily agree, since nationalisation is state capitalism and has never been advocated by the S.P.G.B.

While the delegates were maintaining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they still believe in nationalisation as the answer to the workers’ problems, strikes were going on in the nationalised coal industry (they break out at the rate of over 30 a week year after year), the Railwaymen were preparing for a strike over pay and Postal workers were discussing a strike resolution over hours of work. And it would seem from the rent strikes and the riots that followed forcible eviction of council tenants by a local council that nationalisation's little sister municipal ownership is no less unpopular.

The day that the Daily Herald reported the vote on the policy of the government buying company shares it reported developments in the direction of a little private enterprise by the local Labour parties themselves. They are planning to form a Unit Trust to invest their funds in company shares and thus cash in on the rise in the profits and prices of ordinary shares that has accompanied inflation. A trade union Unit Trust is already being organised.

Edgar Hardcastle

The T.U.C., What it is and What it Should be (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not difficult for anyone who reflects dispassionately on the world situation to see broadly what the human race needs to solve its problems; an end to war and war preparations, an increase of the production of useful articles and services, and means to secure that these things are made available to all. Put in so general a form, these aims would be endorsed with more or less sincerity by members of all political parties all over the world; but there the cleavage begins. Non-Socialists, if they believe the ends practicable at all, think they can be won by modifications of the existing social order and by building up United Nations. Socialists hold that class and international conflict can only be ended by replacing Capitalism by Socialism and that until this is done neither the problem of achieving a large-scale increase of production of useful articles, nor the problem of distribution to all, can be solved; while Capitalism endures there will always be wars, and the workers will go on producing wealth not for themselves but for the Capitalist owners of the means of production and distribution, with accompanying waste of labour and materials on armaments and other Capitalist anti-social activities and with inevitable poverty for the many and riches for the few.

Where does the T.U.C. stand in this? It represents a large proportion of organised workers in Britain, is committed in theory to internationalism through its affiliation to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and vaguely approves of a new social order declared to be the aim of the Labour Party here and of similar parties in other lands.

How does it shape up to its responsibilities? Regrettably it does so very ill, as the recent Brighton conference shows; this despite the much overrated shift of attitude from half acceptance of some degree of “wage restraint” to a more or less definite repudiation. On every issue it dealt with effects not causes and this was as true of the “militants” as of those they condemned.

Certainly the organised workers should use what strength they have to press for higher wages but how far does this carry them? They have been doing this ever since there were trade unions and in so doing they tacitly accept Capitalism and the wages system. The limit of trade union pressure on the industrial field is set by the state of trade. When trade declines or when the sales of Capitalist industries in one country are hit by competition from other countries, the ability of the trade unions to do more than fight rearguard actions disappears. How can motor workers fight for higher wages against employers who have less need for labour?

No delegate even thinks it worth mentioning that, as Marx pointed out, the only way out of this is that trade unions should recognise the need to aim at the abolition of the wages system. This means aiming for Socialism but among all those who pay lip-service to Socialism no-one ever reminds T.U.C. conferences of it.

Conference gave its approval to “automation” while seeking safeguards for displaced workers and consultation between employers and trade unions, but nobody thought fit to raise the one vital issue that the new automation plants, like the old ones, are the private property of the Capitalist class, used for their profit not for the good of the community as a whole. The extent of the demand that the delegates considered they were entitled to make was. in the words of the Communist, Mr. Haxell, of the E.T.U., being ready to fight “and win some of the increase of productivity for the workers."—(Manchester Guardian, Sept. 5.)

Some delegates urged support for automation on the ground that if British industry did not adopt it, while industries in foreign countries did, British products would be priced out of world markets. Here was a chance, which the Conference did not take, of recalling that the international trade union movement ought to have as one of its functions united action to prevent employers playing off the workers in one country against those in others, to the detriment of the whole working class.

The resolution demanding the 40 hour week was an exhibition of unreality. True the trade unions ought to struggle for shorter hours but they have most of them long ceased to do so in any real sense. Before the war 47 hours were the typical working week in British industry. Now it is nominally 44 hours; but in fact, through widespread overtime working, average actual hours are longer than before the war. The only people who have actually reduced hours are the employers in those industries where falling sales have resulted in a compulsory shorter week with shorter pay.

The resolution against “wage restraint” showed muddled thinking and demagogic speeches at their worst. Socialists would have stated the Socialist case for the ending of Capitalism and with it the ending of the wages system. What conference did was to tie up wage restraint with an attack on the Tory Government because it had not played its part in controlling Capitalism—as if the workers were any better off when the Labour Government was in power trying vainly to improve Capitalism by “controlling it.” Mr. Campbell, of the N.U.R., in what goes for a “fighting speech,” slated the Tory Government for saying that “balance of payments” difficulties made wage restraint necessary and he received the applause of delegates by declaring that Tory policy had meant “to many working class households,” “difficulties with their balance of payments ."—(Daily Telegraph, September 6.). This is the veriest claptrap, for working class households have been faced with difficulties of making ends meet ever since there was a working class and just as much under Labour Government as now. Indeed the evidence shows that under the Labour Government the position happened to be rather worse. Official figures show that between 1947 and 1951 wage rates rose 22 per cent, while the cost of living outstripped wage rates with a rise of 29 per cent. Since the Tories came in, helped by more resolute trade union pressure, that position has been reversed and now wage rates at 64 per cent, above 1947 are ahead of the cost of living at 56 per cent. This was recently pointed out by a Labour M.P. Mr. Crossman. Writing in the Daily Mirror (November 15, 1955), he admitted that but for the workers' acceptance of the Labour Government’s “wage restraint” wages under the Labour Government could have been higher than they were. The workers failed, he wrote, to extort “the highest possible price for labour in a free market.”

And in spite of his bold words on rejecting wage restraint Mr. Campbell went on to say that if the present government were to restore the controls used by the Labour Government “ trade unionists might not be compelled .to press for wage increases to meet the price increases forced upon us.” He is prepared, in other words, to go back to the defeatest trade union policy operated under the Labour Government.

Br. Cousins, who carried conference with him on the resolution, demanded that the Tory Government should go in for disarmament and thus save £750 million as an alternative to wage restraint.—(Manchester Guardian, September 6.). He also spoke for a Labour Government. It brought applause from delegates who seemingly forgot that it was the Labour Government who launched the £1,500 million a year rearmament programme and inaugurated the “wage restraint” policy.

But having thus attacked armament costs and having also resolved to press for a reduction in the length of military service below the two years fixed by the Labour Government Conference went on to pass a resolution on the Suez dispute which, while anti-war in tone nevertheless committed Congress to support the use of force if it was approved by the United Nations. But war is no less war because carried out under United Nation auspices as the delegates should well know from the Korean conflict into which the Labour Government entered in 1950. Supporters of this resolution mistakenly argue that workers' jobs are involved and therefore trade unions must act including giving support to war, if United Nations gives approval. Which brings us back to the total failure of the T.U.C. to envisage the urgent necessity of getting rid of the social system that causes wars.

After being in existence for three-quarters of a century the T.U.C. is still going nowhere and offering no guidance to the workers about their vital interest.

Edgar Hardcastle

Mr. Cousins Damp Squib (1959)

From the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

The Labour Party is in a turmoil—and the General Election is near. Mr. Cousins of the Transport and General Workers Union has thrown a spanner into the works. He has been making quite a stir in the news by his opposition to the official attitude of the Labour Party on the H-Bomb and nationalisation.

Mr. Bevan has now become quite respectable as an official spokesman. Mr. Cousins has replaced him as the Labour Party rebel—the “leftist.” It is only farce that is played out every now and then with only a change in the personnel. Is there really any fundamental difference between Mr. Cousins and the leaders of the Labour Party?

He objects to the H-Bomb but supports the Labour Party, which is pledged to a defence programme. Millions were killed in the last war without the H-Bomb being used, but he does not support the only policy that will end war. He believes Mr. Gaitskell is sincere but that his policy on the H-Bomb will not be effective.

At the Transport and General Workers Conference in the Isle of Man Mr. Cousins dropped his bombshell. He is also reported as follows: “I have never believed that the most important thing in our lives is to elect a Labour Government. The most important thing is to elect a Labour Government that is determined to carry out Socialist policies.” (Daily Express, 10th July, 1959.)

Now what does he mean by “to carry out Socialist policies”? To him it means nationalisation—state capitalism. He objects to the official line on nationalisation—buying shares instead of the state taking over the industries. But to him. just as to them, state ownership is equivalent to Socialism. In other words, in spite of the long experience of state capitalism, he blindly accepts it as the fundamental aim, despite the disillusion and unrest in state owned or state controlled concerns and the labour struggles in them for better conditions.

Thus what Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

In striking back at Mr. Cousins Mr. Gaitskell made some very significant statements. He made it clear that a Labour Government was not bound by the decisions of the rank and file of the Labour Party and that he was first and foremost a patriot. Here are some extracts from his speech at Workington on the 11th July, 1959:

A Labour Government will take into account the views of the Conference, but, as was clearly demonstrated in the correspondence between Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1945, annual conference does not mandate a government.

Both a Labour Government and the Parliamentary Labour Party must be left free to settle in matters of detail how and when the principles and decisions are to be applied in practice. This has always been understood in the past, and it must be clearly understood again today. (Observer, 12th July, 1959.)

Earlier in his speech he was even more emphatically the leader who would disdain the decisions of the Labour movement he claimed to represent:

To give such a pledge [not to resume nuclear tests] might conceivably be to jeopardise the future security of our country, and that I will not do under any circumstances. Those of us who have the responsibilities of political leadership have to remember always that we shall be expected to stand by our pledges.

We will not bother to remind him of the pledges the “political leadership” have broken in the past, but we can remind him that no one is forcing him to take the “political leadership” job. If he doesn’t like what the people who appoint him want him to do he can always resign his job and not fly in the face of their decisions. But that would be the democratic way and leadership is the antithesis of democracy!

Time and again we have pointed out that what the Labour Party was mainly concerned with was not principles but votes. This futile controversy has spotlighted it once again. Labour M.P.’s are wrathful and shaking in their shoes at thought of the effect this blow-up may have on their votes in the next election. That is their main and all-consuming worry. Even Mr. Cousins expostulates that his proposals will not split the Labour Party, and anyhow, he will abide by conference decisions—in spite of the prospect of dire calamity unless the H-Bomb is abandoned.

While the Labour Party storm may have a bad influence on their election prospects it will have no influence upon the subject position of the worker. Only Socialism can remove that subjection—and this has no place in the Labour programme, nor in Mr. Cousins’ outlook.

Gilmac.

50 Years Ago: Mr. Cousins Damp Squib (2009)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Labour Party is in a turmoil—and the General Election is near. Mr. Cousins of the Transport and General Workers Union has thrown a spanner into the works. He has been making quite a stir in the news by his opposition to the official attitude of the Labour Party on the H-Bomb and nationalisation.

Mr. Bevan has now become quite respectable as an official spokesman. Mr. Cousins has replaced him as the Labour Party rebel—the ” leftist.” It is only farce that is played out every now and then with only a change in the personnel. Is there really any fundamental difference between Mr. Cousins and the leaders of the Labour Party?

He objects to the H-Bomb but supports the Labour Party, which is pledged to a defence programme. Millions were killed in the last war without the H-Bomb being used, but he does not support the only policy that will end war. He believes Mr, Gaitskell is sincere but that his policy on the H-Bomb will not be effective.

At the Transport and General Workers Conference in the Isle of Man Mr. Cousins dropped his bombshell. He is also reported as follows: “I have never believed that the most important thing in our lives is to elect a Labour Government. The most important thing is to elect a Labour Government that is determined to carry out Socialist policies.” (Daily Express, 10th July, 1959.)

Now what does he mean by ” to carry out Socialist policies “? To him it means nationalisation—state capitalism. He objects to the official line on nationalisation— buying shares instead of the state taking over the industries. But to him, just as to them, state ownership is equivalent to Socialism. In other words, in spite of the long experience of state capitalism, he blindly accepts it as the fundamental aim, despite the disillusion and unrest in state owned or state controlled concerns and the labour struggles in them for better conditions.

Thus what Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

(from front page article by Gilmac, Socialist Standard, August 1959)

News in Review: Collapse at The Summit (1960)

The News in Review column from the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Collapse at The Summit

The assembling of the Big Four for the Summit meeting in Paris contained all the essentials for great tragi-comedy, except the happy ending. Summit meetings may yet replace the circus as “the greatest show on earth.” Publicity arrangements on a world scale preceded the actual meeting for some years. The “ Summit ” has dominated the headlines of the world’s press. Millions of words have poured out from lengthy articles under banner headlines, speculating on the date and interpreting the significance of statements made by politicians and Government officials. And so at last three thousand journalists congregated in Paris to report the discussions of four individuals who, it is said, between them can and will adjust the barometer of world tension. With the stage set and the audience breathless, the principal actors took the stage. The so-called “main problems” of disarmament, Berlin and the continued division of Germany were now, it was said, to be seriously tackled. But unfortunately the final curtain came down on the overture. By the old. process of mutual abuse, charge and counter-charge, the meeting quickly degenerated. Suddenly nothing had happened.

There will never be anything so futile in the tackling of social problems as the holding of summit meetings. Such meetings only serve to increase the personal prestige of the politicians who attend them and persuade ordinary working people that honest attempts are being made to stem the threat of war. From any government's point of view, there is nothing that a summit meeting could accomplish that the regularised channels of diplomacy could not accomplish equally as well. All such conferences, even where politicians do succeed in getting together, entirely by-pass the everyday problems of working people. Their whole scope and function is irrelevant to the real and pressing issues of modern society, issues that the working class itself must come to grips with.

Turkey

When Menderes, the Turkish Prime Minister, survived the air disaster at Gatwick, he was acclaimed by the faithful as a saint and a prophet. From the recent events in Turkey, it would appear that the legend is taking some hard knocks. For more than ten years this dictator has used every known method to maintain power. He is himself a big landowner in the west of Turkey — an area in which indescribable poverty is the lot of the Anatolian peasants. We can wonder how is it that the dictatorial regime has survived for ten years. Part of the answer is that the majority of Turks, who are still attached to the Muslim faith worshipped Menderes because of his religious fervour. One interpretation of the cause of the crisis was that it was the work of a small clique inflamed by grudges and ambition. Menderes himself blamed “a handful of youths exploited by certain groups for their selfish political aims.”

Crises are not caused by the evil machinations of individuals; they have their root cause in the way a society is organised. The importance of Turkey in world politics rests partly on the control of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Astronomical amounts of American dollars have been spent in building up Turkey as another “Western bastion of democracy”! Half the Turkish budget is devoted to defence. These measures, coupled with large agricultural credits, have produced the inevitable economic crises which are part and parcel of the capitalist system everywhere. The new Head of State, General Gursel, is described as a Turkish Neguib in search of a Nasser. He has announced that it would be for the next Government to decide whether to put Menderes and his Cabinet on trial. Whatever the outcome, the Turkish working class can look forward to another round of capitalist intrigue and unfulfilled promises.

Eichmann

The news that Adolf Eichmann, a former Gestapo chief, has been captured by Israeli agents, was splashed across the front pages with all the gusto of editors recognizing the sales power of cheap sensationalism. A man-hunt successfully concluded after 15 years, with the quarry a miserable survivor of the Nazi regime, is the sort of titbit that the profit-seeking press can dress up to satisfy the appetites of those who seek cheap thrills in their reading.

To Socialists, the capture of Eichmann in itself is of no importance. The inhumanities which man indicts upon man are not the actions of people who were born monsters, but rather the consequence of inhuman policies and doctrines which a monstrous system conditions human beings into accepting as answers to its economic and political problems. Eichmann was a product of German capitalism which made a scapegoat of the Jews for the failure of Germany to win the 1914-18 war and for the mass unemployment which followed. The massacre of the six million attributed to him was not the work of one “evil genius.” History cannot be so simply explained. But there is significance in the fact that Eichmann is to be given a mockery of a “trial.” What a perversion of the name justice it is which allows the victors in the 1939-45 bloodbath, in which mass murder was committed by both sides, to condemn the leaders of the conquered for the same crimes they perpetrated themselves.

Red Blood

The South African Government has recently published regulations to come into force on 1st September under which “white” and “non-white” blood will be segregated to ensure that as far as possible whites and non-whites will receive blood from white and non-white donors respectively. This segregation of blood has in fact been in practice in South Africa for some years, although blood plasma imported from America was not segregated. The exponents of apartheid claim that the Africans are biologically different to the whites in being “ inherently backward ” and it seems that they think Africans’ blood is different too. Blood from human beings cannot, of course, be identified as to the colour of skin of its donor, but only by its various groupings, A, O, Rhesus, etc. Some biologists have even stated that the blood of some types of gorilla and human beings is interchangeable. This new regulation is another example of the blind prejudice of the South African Government in its policy of apartheid.

Misdirected Energy

On May 21st, sixteen cannibals were sentenced to death in Wewak, New Guinea, for killing, cooking and eating three men, and kidnapping eight women. After lecturing the men, who spent most of the time dozing on the courtroom floor, the judge said that because the raid was a “social and economic one with the dual purpose of providing wives and flesh,” he would make strong recommendations for mercy, and suggested a training programme for the convicted men. In prison they will no doubt be put through a rigorous rehabilitation programme. They will be lectured on the error of their ways and taught how to conform to the moral standards of modern civilisation. Perhaps they might even become so civilised they may be allowed to join the army and do the capitalists’ dirty work for them. Queens Regulations will not, of course, permit them to consume their victims, but they will be able to kill with the approval of the law, the blessing of the church, and if they do really well, they may even become national heroes.

Wyatt Sees the Light

Everything happens finally, if only one can wait long enough for it. This is one reflection that springs to mind after the attack made by Mr. Woodrow Wyatt, right-wing Labour M.P., on the big unions’ block vote as undemocratic. This has been obvious for years, of course — to all except Mr. Wyatt and his right- wing Labour friends. No complaint was ever heard from them about the block vote, so long as the big unions with doglike devotion regularly swung all their millions of votes behind the Labour leadership. But now that the man who wields the block vote of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, Mr. Frank Cousins, has clashed with Mr. Gaitskell over defence policy, a great light has broken in on Mr. Wyatt’s mind. With cries of astonishment, he announces as a new discovery what everyone else had been pointing out for years. Still, one must be grateful that Mr. Wyatt has seen the obvious, even at this late stage.

But Mr. Wyatt's revelations only extend so far as Mr. Cousins. Not a word has come from him about the second largest of the giant unions, whose leader, Sir Thomas Williamson, is a supporter of Mr. Gaitskell, and who recalled the annual conference of his union because they had voted the wrong way the first time. But we must wait. If Sir Thomas is replaced by a leader who disagrees with Mr. Gaitskell, Mr. Wyatt may discover another “arrogant bully with a block vote” (which is the way he now describes Mr. Cousins).

As for the left-wing of the Labour Party, who have been denouncing the block vote of the unions throughout the time it was automatically used against them, they have become strangely silent. The block vote used against them, and the block vote used by Mr. Cousins in their favour, are apparently two quite different things. How circumstances alter cases, even to the extent of turning democracy into bullying, or bullying into democracy!

News in Review: Cunarder on the Clyde (1965)

The News in Review column from the February 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cunarder on the Clyde

Both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were built in the Clydeside shipyard of John Brown.

When it was confirmed, on the eve of Hogmanay, that the same shipyard had won the contract to make the replacement for the Queen Mary, both God and Commercial Television celebrated.

Church bells rang out in the Clydebank parish of Kilbowie. Scottish Television look huge press adverts, which crowed that the right yard had won the contract. Perhaps they are hoping that their blatant appeal to ignorance and patriotism will persuade some of the five thousand who will be employed on the new Cunarder to spend some of their wages on television sets.

No bells rang on the Tyne and in Belfast, homes of the other two firms competing for the contract, Swan, Hunter, Vickers-Armstrong and Harland and Wolff are probably hoping that John Brown’s preoccupation with the new Cunarder over the next three years or so will leave a more open market for them.

But this is by no means certain, British ship-building is still struggling, pushed hard by the Japanese and the Swedes and some Continental yards. The Cunard affair underlines the fact that in such competition there can be only one winner. There could be gloomy times ahead for the shipyard workers in Belfast and on Tyneside. Perhaps Scottish Television will make a small donation to their soup kitchens.

The profitability of the new Cunarder is doubtful. More and more people are crossing the Atlantic by air, and fewer and fewer by sea. The shipping lines have largely given up the struggle to compete in cheap travel, and now concentrate on selling the sea voyage as a more gracious and rejuvenating way of travelling than a clamourous jet flight.

The new liner is designed to accept these conditions. It will be a flexible ship, with accommodation which can be rearranged into two classes and a draught shallow enough to permit cruising, if this seems more profitable. Meanwhile the ageing Queens have to face competition from more modern, faster ships; next year Sweden and Italy enter the race.

This uncertain world, into which the new liner will be launched, does not resemble the leisured and gracious image which Cunard once built for themselves.

The reality of capitalism is grim, and never grimmer than when a proud example of craftsmanship and ingenuity is pushed out into the rough seas of commercial anarchy.

Agin' the Guinea

Next month, at Largs in Scotland, the Labour women will hold their annual national conference.

There they will discuss the customary sheaf of meaningless and hypocritical resolutions.

Consider, for example, the motion which condemns the practice of pricing goods in guineas and which calls on the government to abolish the guinea system.

On the face of it, this may seem a genuine expression of a desire to protect the consumer interests of the working class. But let us look at it a little deeper.

We are all familiar with the ruse of pricing in guineas. Perhaps some people are actually taken in by it, and think that a suit costing fifteen guineas is no more expensive than one costing fifteen pounds.

But such people are obviously beyond the help of pious resolutions. They would be just as easily deceived by another, equally transparent, trick if the Labour women got their way over the guinea.

So what will the conference be worrying about? Do the Labour women think that abolishing the guinea will do something to stop prices rising? Are they looking for an excuse for their government’s failure to keep that part of their election programme?

Let us get down to basic facts. The Labour Party supports capitalism, which is a system of production of goods for sale and therefore a system in which there are buyers and sellers and prices at which they buy and sell.

The interests of buyer and seller are directly opposed. One wants the price to be as low as possible, the other wants it as high as possible. These opposing interests are mostly asserted in ways which are within capitalism’s laws.

Sometimes they are asserted by illegal methods. And sometimes they are asserted by methods which, while not illegal, are not exactly honest. These methods include monopoly control and such diddles as pricing something worth half a crown at two shillings elevenpence halfpenny and the use of guineas instead of pounds.

Whatever method is used, it must be the forces of the market which finally control the fluctuations of a price, however it is expressed. All of this is very proper and necessary to capitalism, even if it sometimes means that prices rise sharply, or come crashing down in a slump.

Sly ruses, by buyer or seller, have no effect upon that. They are only a part of capitalism's competitive scramble. Individual members of the Labour Party may not like some of the effects of the scramble, but they ardently support the social system which produces it.

It is that basic issue, and nothing else, that they should be discussing at Largs.

Prices: up, up, up

“We was robbed!” has always been a favourite complaint of the Labour Party when contemplating the frustrations and the failures of their governments.

In 1931, they said they were beaten by a Bankers’ Ramp. After the war it was the unmanageable dollar gap. Last November the Gnomes of Zurich were said to be busily undermining the finances of Labour Britain. Now the grocers are on the rampage.

Rising prices are proving to be one of the government's big problems, especially in the grocery trade, where items like frozen foods, biscuits and sausages have recently gone up. This is not the end of it: during four weeks spanning the turn of the year, nearly one thousand retail prices were increased.

All of this makes Labour's promises in their election programme, New Britain, to introduce “ . . . new and more relevant policies to check the persistent rise in prices” look pretty sick. So the squeal —"We was robbed!” can be heard" again.

This time it is Mr. Frank Cousins, at one of his Nuneaton by-election meetings, who squealed:

  The 15 per cent surcharge does not apply to foodstuffs, so there is no excuse there (for price increases). . . to pretend that an extra 6d on fuel justifies an extra 1d or 2d on a particular tin, packet, or bcttle . . . is just plain nonsense.

Now what does this amount to? Mr. Cousins also complained; ”. . . some of the firms . . . are already making record profits.” What that means is that the Labour government are being given the run-around by the grocers; it means that they cannot control the mechanisms of capitalist society.

In the same way, if we accept the excuse that there was a Bankers’ Ramp in 1931, it follows that Labour could not control the international financiers. On the same argument the Attlee government could not control its financial crises and now Mr. Wilson’s lot cannot control its own retailers.

But the Labour party, like every other capitalist party, has always claimed that they can control capitalism. Hence their optimistic election talk of plans, control, priorities, all of which evaporates in face of reality.

The reality of prices is that they do not depend on the level of import duty and taxes. In the short run, the fluctuations of a price are governed by the forces of supply and demand, which means that the seller will charge as much as the market allows.

This is exactly what the grocery trade is doing, and what Mr. Cousins is complaining about. But nobody who supports capitalism can complain when the system takes its logical course.

Mr. Cousins cannot complain and the Labour government cannot complain. Neither can the millions of people who put them into power.

African turmoil

“Malawi,” said Dr. Hastings Banda recently, “is at war.” He is not the first of the leaders of the new States on the African continent to-make such a declaration.

Egypt, we have been told, is at war. So is Zambia. Nigeria and the Congo are immersed in internal conflicts of varying intensity. And so on.

There have been, of course, no formal declarations of war. But that is not what Dr. Banda and his counterparts mean when they use the word.

The new states are struggling to establish themselves against pressures both external and internal. One of their governments’ problems is to break down the old tribal allegiances and substitute a wider ranging patriotism.

Africans who once thought of themselves as belonging to this or that tribe, under this or that chief, must now be persuaded that it is better to belong to a developing capitalist nation, under this or that leader or dictator.

And how is this achieved? The techniques are wearyingly familiar. There are the patriotic declarations, the empty mysticism over the new flag, the dark warnings of impending danger from outside, the calls to arms. There is also the synthetic worship of the new nation’s leader—the personality cults of men like Nkrumah and Banda.

Part of this process is the “discovery” of alleged plots against the security of the state. Dr. Banda said that his former Foreign Minister, Mr. Chiume, is combining with the Zanzibar rebel Mr. Okello in a scheme to invade Malawi. Neighbouring Zambia is to spend £7 million on “defence and internal security,” double its border posts and step up its naval forces on the boundary rivers and lakes.

Dr. Banda appealed to the Malawi people to arrest any strangers and report them to the Congress Party; “ Investigate every strange face,” he said.

This is like a small-scale re-enactment of Europe in the Thirties. It is also reminiscent of the spy-scares which helped to keep war fever up to pitch during the two world wars.

But the African nationalists always claimed, when they were struggling for power, that they would be above the tricks and subterfuges of the old colonialist powers.

There need be no surprise that they have turned out to be different. Tricks and lies are always used in the fights between capitalist powers. As the new, African states enter these fights, it is inevitable that they should use the time honoured methods.

Perhaps Dr. Banda is right; perhaps Malawi is at war, for in war the first casualty has always been the truth.

50 Years Ago: Rebels Too Late (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few things have more searingly exposed the futility and absurdity of Labour’s so-called left wing than their ‘revolt’ over the government’s policies on prices and incomes and Vietnam.

In all the fuss over the revolt, it seemed to escape notice that, not for the first time, the rebels were rather late. The Prices and Incomes Bill was first introduced during the lifetime of the last government; the version which caused Frank Cousins to resign his Ministry is actually milder than the previous one.

On Vietnam, the Wilson government always made clear their support for American actions, including the bombing of the North.

In other words, the present government are simply carrying on the policies of the last. But in between there was the general election; that was the time for the rebels to make their disagreements known.

They might even have resigned from the Labour Party and fought on an independent platform. But they had probably all studied the fate of the Radical Alliance in Hull North. So what did they do? Well here are extracts from the election addresses of two of the Vietnam rebels:

Hugh Jenkins (Putney): … we need a longer period of office, with a more secure majority, so that we can get on with the job.
Sydney Bidwell (Southall): If you . . . intend to vote Labour again . . . may I warmly thank you in advance and urge you, in the name of our just and common cause, to make absolutely sure you use your vote.

No word of dissension disturbed the orthodoxy of these addresses. Hugh Jenkins was hanging so firmly on to Wilson’s coat tails that he embellished his address with a picture of the Leader, pipe and avuncular expression and all. There was plenty to protest about last March but the rebels held their tongues. And their seats.

(from News in Review, Socialist Standard, August 1966)

Sincerity is not enough (1968)

Book Review from the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Frank Cousins, A Study by Margaret Stewart (Hutchinson, 35s.)

Margaret Stewart, as a Fleet Street industrial correspondent, is in an admirable position to study a trade union chief. It is a pity that she confuses her study of Frank Cousins by the continuous use of those popular but vague terms, "the left" and "the right".

In the introduction to her study Stewart poses three questions. First, why did the Transport and General Workers' Union swing from the right under Arthur Deakin to the left under Frank Cousins? Them what has been the effect of Cousins' campaign against wage restraint? Finally, is Cousins big in his own right or because he is the leader of one-and-a-half million trade unionists? The answer to these questions is to be found, mainly between the lines, in her following chapters.

Stewart shows that the great majority of union members are apathetic and do not influence union policy. Full time officers are constitutionally debarred from opposition and lay members in high office are inhibited from expressing opposing views to those of their chief. The delegates to the union's policy making conferences are influenced by an autocrat like Deakin, to whom they listened in sullen silence, or by their hero worship of Cousins, whose speeches they greet with vociferous applause. For decades past they have accepted the views of their current General Secretary and voted accordingly. When Cousins came on the stage with a new policy the delegates remained loyal and supported him. The mass of the membership did not swing left or right. It noticed no change.

The members of the TGWU, like all workers, aspire to achieve the highest possible wage. Their aspirations were held in check by a government policy of wage restraint as expounded by Deakin and are equally held in check by the same policy as opposed by Cousins. Deakin proposed it, Cousins opposes it, but it is still there.

Stewart points to the series of accidents and incidents that catapulted Cousins into the union secretary's seat in 1956. Such accidents or incidents could easily have left him in a junior office and he would have been as little heard of today as he was in 1955. He is big because he is the leader of a million and a half workers who follow him enthusiastically, mistaking his verbal fireworks and his sincerity for sound sense.

We accept Stewart's assessment that Cousins is sincere and honest but, she says, even after writing her book, she still finds him an enigma. The things that make him enigmatic are his dual loyalties. As a trade union chief his job is to promote the interests of his members. As a member of the Labour Party he feels obliged to support the Labour government even while protesting against its anti-working class policies.

That is why, as Stewart tells us, Cousins considers the union rule that precludes "communists" from holding office is silly, yet he panders to the Labourites by aggressively opposing attempts to have the rule rescinded. At a TGWU Rules Revision Conference the present writer opposed political discrimination in the union and moved for the rescindment of the rule. Cousins opened his opposition speech with the words, "Waters says he is carrying a torch for no political party. Well, I am. I am carrying a torch for the Labour Party" (Loud cheers).

When union members are on strike they expect Cousins to lead them. The Labour government wants him to keep them at, or get them back to, work. He advocates opposition to the Prices and Incomes Policy but dodges open conflict with the government by taking the municipal busmen's case to a court.

In capitalist society the interests of the working class and the capitalist class are diametrically opposed. In the ensuing struggle the workers organise into trade unions and the government, be it Liberal, Conservative or Labour, is compelled to safeguard the national capitalist interests. No man can serve both masters. If he tries, and he is not a rogue, he must appear an enigma to those who fail to understand the capitalist system.

Cousins accepted the invitation to join the Labour government because he thought he could do better serve the workers. he left it because he did not wish to be identified with policies that were to the workers' detriment. But he remains loyal to the Labour party without apparently realising his invidious position.

Stewart's brief description of the 1958 London bus strike is sound except that the reference to Sir John Elliot's magnanimity is incorrect. He did not give the members of the busmen's negotiating committee an autographed copy of his book. He only promised. No tears were shed.

We do not quarrel with Stewart's narration about Cousins 'ban the bomb' activities, his attitude to the infamous Clause Four or his brief governmental career. We do quarrel with her reference to him as a Socialist. She likens him to Keir Hardie and quotes his old assessment of himself as an "old fashioned socialist". She says his socialism is instinctive and comes from his heart as much as his brain.

At a mass rally of TGWU members in the Central Hall, Westminster in 1966 Cousins launched his "socialist plan". A minimum of £15 for a 40 hour week with three weeks annual holiday for all workers. This plan is now adopted by the TUC. It bears as much resemblance to Socialism as it does to green cheese.

W. Waters