The Passing Show: A sad, sad story (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sad, sad story

A week or two ago a four-page leaflet fell out of a laundry parcel. I read it later the same day in snatches, between mouthfuls of food at lunch time. It was a lament — in black, white and brown printing—by a group of launderers and dry cleaners, over the new taxes and other hardships they are having to bear under the present government. Did you know, for example, that the Selective Employment Tax will add another £7 million a year to the launderers' labour costs?

But the amusing note is struck in a paragraph on the prices “standstill”. The launderers have found a loophole (one of many) which allows them ‘‘some latitude" because their costs are affected by government action. "So you can see," they wail, ‘‘that our dilemma lies in balancing co-operation against financial suicide." A neat turn of phrase, coined to sugar the pill, because the local laundry has now slapped on a surcharge of a penny in the shilling.

Can you imagine yourself approaching your employer right now for a wage increase, and using the same sort of talk? Try moaning to him about balancing this against that, and see how far you get. He'll probably look at you as if you’ve gone mad, murmur something about the pay freeze, and bring the interview very effectively to a close. No good telling him you’re going to make a surcharge. He just won’t pay it to you. and that’s that. Your position is radically different from that of the launderers or any other capitalists. You have only your labour power to sell, and the government is determined that you are not going to get a pay rise for at least six months, but as far as price control in general is concerned the whole thing is just a very bad joke.

We have dealt with this situation elsewhere, so perhaps just one last thought is all that is necessary here. Were you one of those simple folk who believed what this and other governments have told you about being much better off if only you’d curb your wage demands? By that logic, then, you should be a lot better off by next spring. Perhaps you don’t believe it any more? No, and neither does the government.

Korea—some of the story

General MacArthur was sacked from his command because, among other things, he was pressing for the Korean war to be carried into China and for atom bombs to be used there. There was a sigh of relief from left-wingers when he went, and perhaps a murmur or two of applause for President Truman’s action.

Not long after that, Eisenhower became U.S. President and from his recent television talk (September 18) it seems that pressures to extend the “police action” did not all originate from MacArthur. In fact Eisenhower wielded the atom bomb as a strong diplomatic weapon in his armistice talks with the North Koreans and let them and the Chinese know that America was ready to use it if negotiations were protracted much longer.

It is only now, when the truth begins to trickle out in very small quantities, that people can begin to guess how perilously close to the brink of another big shooting war the capitalist world was drifting in the early .1950s. War is not fought to Queensbury rules; practically anything goes if one side or the other thinks it can get away with it. And nuclear weapons must have been a sore temptation to the U.S. authorities, whatever President Truman may have thought. 

The television interview was in the first of a series of programmes called The Struggle For Peace—surely a gigantic misnomer. Accordingly Eisenhower, the American forces alone sustained 135,000 casualties. Some “police action”; some “peace”.

The naked truth

You can be alternately bored and amused for an hour or two if you go and see one of the rather corny nudist films on in London's West End just now. 1 saw one called World Without Shame, and its plot, if such it can be called, is heavily laden with the delightfully naive message that if only we’d all take our clothes off, spend most of the day sunning ourselves and generally “get back to nature,” the problems of the world would be solved.

The story starts with a young man winning about £26,000 on the pools. He and his wife chuck up their jobs in London and go to live with a few chosen friends on a quiet Mediterranean island. “We’ll get away for good from the rat race. We’ll be completely self-supporting,” enthuses our young man, fingering the pools cheque in his pocket. So off they go. There is even the political hint in another of his reasons when he talks of “some maniac pressing the H Bomb button and blowing us all to hell.” Someone ought to have reminded the producers that the Mediterranean would hardly go unscathed in such an event.

Never mind. They settle on the island in their birthday suits, dividing their time between sleeping, eating, some work and a great deal of sunbathing. The sun always shines—someone seems to have forgotten that the weather can often be cold and wet even in those parts—and presumably we are to believe they all live happily ever after. The scenery is .beautiful, the direction and acting embarrassingly poor (you often find yourself laughing in the wrong places), and the pathetic naivete of the whole proposition glaringly apparent.

We have never thought much of the idea that you can buy yourself out of the rat race, although a few thousand pounds can of course make things a lot easier for you. But the effects of the scramble are all around you, and the notion of an oasis of self-sufficiency in a desert of capitalism is a non-starter. Even the film has to concede this in part when one of the characters, a painter, runs out of canvas, and gets fresh supplies by sailing to the mainland and selling some of his pictures.

Gaspers

“The new strategy demands a great increase in fertilizer production, which can only be achieved if foreign capital can be induced to invest heavily and quickly." (The Times correspondent on Indian food production, 19.9.66).

Dr. Seretse Khama, who was exiled from his homeland by the last Labour government after his marriage to a white woman, was yesterday created a Knight Commander of the British Empire.” (Guardian, 21.9.66).

“This is our socialism: assertion of social responsibility for our economic welfare and for the welfare of the individual family." (Harold Wilson Purpose in Power, quoted in Nova magazine interview, Sept., 1966).

“The Prime Minister, I understand, has no intention of involving himself in doctrinal arguments about the true meaning of socialism which he believes has done enough harm to the party already. (Nora Beloff in The Observer, 2.10.66).

“Sir Isaac Wolfson reports that because of the freeze, dividends which could have been 36½ per cent will be held at 32½ per cent, the same as last year.” (Daily Express, 11.10.66).

There is nothing in Mr. Wilson’s present policy which a Tory Prime Minister, faced by a comparable crisis, would necessarily reject. (Peregrine Worsthorne—Conservatism Today).

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: The Same Everywhere (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Same Everywhere

The Balance of Payments. Four words which have meant a headache for every British government for umpteen years. “Our” gold and dollar reserves are too low. “Our” imports are too high. “We” are paying ourselves more than “we” are earning. “We” are heavily in debt. And so the moans go on and on. So much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a peculiarly British situation, almost as if the rest of the world was flowing with milk and honey for the average inhabitant. Well, let’s take a look at it.

First of all, if you’re thinking that high exports and a favourable balance of trade mean that we could all sit back and relax, a little bit of history reading will do much to dispel that notion. Indeed, at a time when Britain was just about the most powerful nation in the world, ruling the waves militarily and commercially, working people lived under the most shocking conditions. But come a little more up-to-date if you like, and remember that only a few years ago West Germany had a gigantic balance of trade surplus (“embarrassingly large” one commentator once called it), yet her workers had to struggle just as hard for improvements in wages and conditions, and there have been some really bitter strikes there in recent times.

And today? The German capitalists have been getting jittery about the state of their economy. According to Chancellor Erhard, wages have been rising too fast (it’s always too fast—never too slow), since 1963 by 8½ per cent, while productivity has gone up by only four per cent. He has not been slow to threaten Wilson-like measures: —

. . .  we still have things under control. However, if we let them drift, then the same will have to happen to us, that is, a wages freeze, a prices freeze, a considerable rise in the cost of living, indeed even partial balance of payments control. (Guardian, 6/8/66)

It has been favourite with some people to recommend that British workers take a leaf out of their German brothers' book and work as hard. Doesn’t seem to have made much difference, does it? The cry for them, as for us, is still “work harder and pull your belts in!”

Just to show you that capitalism’s problems are similar, wherever you go, let us take another example, this time from one of the “poorer” countries—a rising power since the end of the war. India. There the government has published its fourth five-year plan, envisaging some £10,000 millions investment; yet even if it comes to fruition, the planners admit it will mean:—

. . . every Indian will have a bare two metres more of cloth each year, and three ounces more of food each day.

Not much to write home about? Ah, but even this miserable achievement has a backhanded slap to accompany it.

A massive export drive, if necessary by curbing consumption at home, and Additional taxation . . . are considered essential. (Guardian, 30/8/66)

This, by the way, is one of the countries figuring prominently in the Oxfam appeals, and there is no doubt about the poverty, squalor and starvation of many millions of its inhabitants. But developing Indian capitalism is interested in this only incidentally. Its prime concern is the sale of its goods on the world market. And if this means that the Indian workers have to make do with even less than they get now, the government and employers will not shed many tears—except a few crocodile ones.

Want to be a Postman?

There is a delightfully colourful set of brochures which you can get from any post office, listing the delights of a career with the G.P.O. Read it, and discover that when you work as a postman you “enjoy” such perks as “ a safe job” and “a steady wage”, to say nothing of “an easy mind” and “a friendly atmosphere”. Just think, at 23 and over, you can earn the princely sum of £15 11 s. a week, basic, if you work within four miles radius of Charing Cross, and the opportunity to work overtime.

Perhaps like me, you have your doubts about the adequacy of such a wage, especially if you have a wife and children to think about. But, of course, you can’t expect the Post Office to introduce such a discordant note into their literature, which reads like a song of self-praise from beginning to end. In fact, if everything in the postman’s garden is so lovely, why you may ask, does the G.P.O. have to try so hard to entice you into it with such garish and elaborately printed leaflets?

The answer lies not so much in what has been said as in what has been left out. Shift work in all weathers, for example. And the fact that even the present miserable rate of £15 11s. a week has been won only after a determined strike two or three years ago—the first in the Post Office for more than, half a century. The G.P.O. leaflet is typical of much of the stuff you will find in the Situations Vacant column of any newspaper. No employer, particularly in times of labour shortage, is going to lead off with a list of snags. They will become obvious only when you start working for him. Then, in the manner of Orwell “interesting” becomes “boring” and you find that those “gd. wages and conds” are not really enough after all.

But that’s the outcome of a wages system. No matter what honeyed words your employer uses, your wages are always a problem to him, and to you, too.

Thoughts on Crime

But not very deep ones. I’m afraid, from the Evening Standard leader writer of August 24. He was no doubt prompted by the recent outbreaks of violent crime, and gently chided Lord Butler and the present Home Secretary, Mr. Jenkins, for their “bafflement over the causes of crime in an affluent society”. Yet for all the contribution to our knowledge in this particular editorial, the writer might just as well have left his pen in his pocket.

He makes some sweeping and quite unsupported assertions in his attempts to cover this pressing problem in about 10 column inches, and ends up just as much without a real answer as when he started. “Man is a basically aggressive and pugnacious animal,” he writes, but gives no evidence for this, or for his quite startling suggestion that the object of wars, military training, etc., is to provide a safety valve for the pent-up feelings of bored youngsters.

This editorial caught my eye for its complete refusal to ask one simple question—why? If young people are bored, what is the reason, especially in a rapidly changing world? Isn’t the prospect of a lifetime of wage work enough to make anyone bored? And what do people fight about anyway? This is the question the writer should have begun by asking, but never did. We agree with him that poverty is not the cause of crime, though it may aggravate the situation at times. People fight and knock each other about for very material reasons, when you get down to the bottom of things. Over private property, in fact.

The outbreak of violence is just one aspect of the general competitive struggle which affects each one of us throughout his life. We are all jockeying for economic elbow room, and on the international field, this throws whole nations against each other in massive armed conflict. That, by The Evening Standard’s criteria, should be classified as the biggest and most violent crime of all, involving wholesale murder and robbery, yet the editorial never touched it. A crime, apparently, is a crime when it does not have the blessing of your own ruling class. Rob and murder on their behalf, and you might even get a medal for it. Under any other circumstances, a nice long stretch behind bars.

Gaspers

"The Treasury has received several hundred pounds in cash contributions from members of the public since the Prime Minister announced his measures to deal with the economic crisis.”

(Guardian, 12/8/66)

"I won't retire—I wouldn’t know what to do all day.” (Mr. H. Jennings, winner of over £92,000 in Vernons Pools. Daily Mail Advert, 18/8/66)

‘The pressure of events is remorselessly leading towards a major war, while efforts to reverse that trend are lagging disastrously behind.” (U Thant’s statement to the United Nations, 1/9/66)

“The government spent £3,600,000 in assisting the Potato Marketing Board to take potatoes off the market and push up prices for the remainder last year . . .

(Daily Telegraph, 26/8/66)

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: Free blood (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free blood

You walk in and sit down. You are called to a table, where a man in a white coat pricks your finger for a test. Then you lie on a bench and hand the bottle you've been given to a nurse. About twenty minutes later they have a pint of your blood in the bottle and you are drinking a cup of tea. Not long after that you're back at work (that's the worst part of it—the rest is not at all a bother).

This is the typical routine at a blood donor session, and such is the demand for blood, that your pint may be used within a matter of hours. This is one of the sobering facts surrounding the National Blood Transfusion Service in England, and probably one which prompts many workers to give their life fluid every few months.

In this country there is no money in it for you. merely a small certificate or badge in recognition of your services. Equally there are no strings attached or compulsion, yet thousands of people donate at regular intervals and give it no more thought than going to bed or any other day-to-day function. No doubt the prospect of an hour off from the monotony of their work and the chance to see other faces are factors, but I think there is something more to it than that.

Here is perhaps just a faint glimpse of human beings doing something for each other without the prospect of "gain" in the sense that it is meant today, but equally without fear of injury to themselves in the process. Under such conditions is it too much to feel that perhaps many of them get a real sense of satisfaction such as they rarely encounter in their workaday lives? The eagerness with which they give their blood suggests maybe a sense of relief at being able to act for a brief spell without the normal restrictions which capitalism imposes, although they are not conscious of its reason.

Peace time war training

It is about as near to a "harmony of interests" that capitalism will ever let you go, because apart from odd moments like these, you are in constant competition with your fellow man. And even in this sphere, capitalism has a degrading effect, for as fast as blood is collected in one place, it is shed even faster on the roads at home and in places farther afield like the trouble spots of Malaysia. Cyprus and Aden.

This is the background against which to view the efforts of the devoted doctors and nurses of the blood bank. It seems you just can't win while capitalism is with us.

Capitalism causes wars, big and small. That is a simple statement of fact, but it has many implications. You should not, for instance, run away with the idea that war is something which bursts like a thunderclap over a largely unprepared and unsuspecting world, for such are the conditions of modern capitalism that there is plenty of suspicion between the powers, even while they are professing undying friendship, and they are never entirely unprepared.

They are constantly training their forces and developing their weapons of death and destruction, and where they get the chance, they will give them a tryout under operating conditions. Thus they gain valuable data for future modifications in time for the bigger showdowns to come. .Such was the case during the Spanish Civil War for example, when some of the major powers sent arms and "volunteers" to one side or the other and noted their effects. Then there was the Korean episode, when the British Centurion tank was in action and later underwent alterations as a result.

Now this is not to say that Spain and Korea were just glorified weapon testing grounds. Obviously there were very real capitalist interests at stake which caused the flareups and put the men and weapons there in the first place. But they are also regarded as useful training grounds, although this is not something that statesmen and politicians will normally care to admit. However, sometimes we may get a glimpse of cynical candour as one or another of them shoots his mouth off, like Lord Mountbatten, thus:

This is war, but is a very small form of war . . . We are being shot at but really it is the most marvellous training that our forces ever had . . . (speaking on the Malaysian situation in New Zealand March 4th.)

Out of the horse’s mouth indeed. Obviously Lord Mountbatten does not think that the “marvellous training" will be wasted. No doubt it will come in handy to protect British capitalism’s interests elsewhere when this little crisis blows over, and for that very reason then as now, workers will get killed or horribly maimed. It’s a man’s life in the Army.

Infernal combustion engines

A friend of mine runs a small shop on the outskirts of Watford. Apart front his shop and a few others, the road is lined with houses on both sides almost for its entire length. Most of the houses and shops have been there for many years, so there has keen little change in the size or appearance of the road in all that time. But there has been one big change in another respect which terrifies the wits out of me every time I walk along that road.

Time was when the shop door could be left open on a warm day in Summer. But that was some years ago, before the road became a feeder to the M.1. Now, the stink and deafening noise of huge lorries and countless cars have made a nightmare of the place, especially in the rush hour. So, Winter and Summer alike, the shop door stays closed and if you walk along the narrow pavement (laid long before the car became the monster it is today), you need eyes in the back of your head to get you home in one piece. Probably all that has saved the road from complete destruction is the construction of M.1 extension into London a few miles away, due for opening in the near future.

The problem of the roads was growing before the second world war, but it is in the post war years that it has threatened to get out of hand and has been such a headache for the capitalist class of Britain and other countries. One gets the impression that some of them would like to see some sort of restrictions imposed, but the car industry has now assumed such importance in modern capitalist economy, that they will not attempt anything to hamper its growth to any great extent. What this holds in store for us in terms of ripping up the countryside and the deterioration of already ugly places remains to be seen.

It is of course very convenient in many ways to have a car nowadays, but more than that—for many workers it is a positive necessity by the very nature of their employment. It is indicative of the demand to move ever faster in the world of capitalist competition, where time is money and every second counts.

So the politician who takes over the administration of modern capitalism will have to make big allowances for the automobile in his electoral calculations, whatever his personal feelings. Greater London Council Member Mrs. Peggy Jay (wife of Douglas) may shout about proposed “box” of motorways for London, and tell of the destruction of living space, and about ten thousand trees, which it may well entail, but she will not get much support from the electorate at large. For the system which she supports has produced the motorised worker of the sixties, dominated by his machine and hating anyone who denies him the right to drive it where he likes, even in some places onto the sea shore to the very edge of the waves.

Crackpot? indeed yes, but just another of those problems that only a private property system can produce.

Gaspers

”. . . The Conservative Party should not be afraid of inequality.” (Mr. Du Cann, Tory Party Chairman, 27.3.65.)

“ This is not an attack on profits.” (Mr. Brown, defending Labour Government's budget 7.4.65.)

“ My first job is to maintain political stability and if 1 have to detain ten or twenty thousand, I will do it.” (Dr. Banda at a Blantyre rally on 4.4.65.)

“The days of nuclear war are gone." (Mao Tse Tung to Arab Leaders in Peking, reported 6.4.65.)

"Businessmen have more hope of making progress and money under a Labour Government than they had before.” (Mr. Brown in an interview with the editor of Director, Institute of Directors Journal, April 1965.)

"We do not care what colour a person's skin is. It is just that we do not want any more coloured people in Marshall Street.” (Mrs. Groves of Smethwick after a deputation meeting with the Housing Minister 8.4.65.)

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: Is He Really So Greene? (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is He Really So Greene?

At the time of writing rail union secretary S. F. Greene has a lot on his mind. Even though the rail strike was called off at the last moment, there is still plenty for Mr. Greene and his lads to do round the negotiating table.

Which perhaps explains the very terse letter one of our members received from him at the beginning of February. You may know that it is the practice for the Socialist Party to send speakers to put our case to other organisations where possible, particularly trade unions. No strings attached, incidentally, except perhaps payment of the speaker’s fares. So one of our branch organisers wrote to the N.U.R. headquarters asking for a list of their branch addresses, intending to write to some of them direct.

Nothing very difficult about that, you might think? Well, you’d be wrong. “Dear Sir,” came back Mr. Greene’s reply of February 3rd. “1 have received your letter ... but regret 1 am unable to supply you with the information you require.” That was all, leaving us to draw whatever conclusions we liked. For example, was it that he just did not have the information? Is it possible that the N.U.R. is a union whose general secretary doesn’t know where its branches are? How on earth did he let them know whether or not to strike?

Maybe Mr. Greene is just not allowed by his executive to tell us what we asked, which seems pretty daft when you think that any railway porter could probably tell you the address of his union branch without a second thought. No, we can only think that perhaps he doesn't want us to speak to his branches, and that maybe the word has got around that the Labour Party doesn't like us very much (it’s mutual, by the way). After all, the N.U.R. is affiliated to that body. Let us then suggest a rewrite of Mr. Greene’s reply for hint: -

I have received your letter, and have the information you require, hut if you thing l'm sending it to you you're jolly well mistaken. I'm not having any incitement to disaffection—we've supported the Labour Party for more years than I care to remember (and a lot of them I don't care to remember), and we’re going on doing it, never mind their anti-working class actions and the stand-up fight we’re having with them over pay and conditions.

Which, when you think of it, seems to typify the sort of logic behind the thinking of most Labour supporters.

The ''Mirror" Again

And while we're talking about railwaymen, I suppose it was inevitable that they would get precious little support from the rubbish mongers of the capitalist press in general, and that the Daily Mirror would wade into them with two-inch headlines. ‘‘Chaos — Or Commonsense?” yelled the front page on February 10th, while the centre pages of the same issue carried on the attack with an article by that very rich friend of the workers, Labour M.P. Woodrow Wyatt.

The Mirror has always prided itself on its plain speaking and down-to-earth attitude, but this does not make it really a very original newspaper. It says mainly what the others are saying but in a brasher and coarser manner, and, of course, it specialises in large headlines and meagre reading content. In the past it has made a practice of picking out certain strikes and condemning them because they were small and petty. Now the N.U.R. gets it in the neck for precisely the opposite reason.

Because of the Mirror’s deliberately cultivated COR-BLIMBYness, many people think it has working class interests at heart, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is, as ever, firmly on the side of British capitalism, even though it may niggle some capitalist politicians and at times land itself with a libel action. It deals always with superficialities, never scratching under the surface of any social problem. This is not surprising—all newspapers distort facts and pander to ignorance and prejudice to a greater or lesser extent. But the Mirror must truly be the envy of Fleet Street in having developed the technique to the nth degree and built a circulation of many millions on a veritable mountain of bewilderment and bigotry. Therein perhaps lies its only claim to originality. It ran true to form over the railmen's strike.

How Much Are You Worth?

"What sort of—um—salary were you thinking of, Mister—um—?" I was asked by the lean, sharp featured, fussy little personnel man. I was a fresh-faced school leaver, determined to start to start as I meant to go on, and really get somewhere in the world. I swallowed hard.

‘Two pounds a week?” I suggested in a squeaky voice which belied my attempts to sound bold and confident. He wrote it on his pad, ringing the figure round slowly and heavily with his pencil, simultaneously shaking his head and drawing in a long slow breath through rounded lips. “Frankly, you’ve gone down in my estimation,” he confided. “I was hoping that you would be different from the usual run of money-grabbing youngsters we have coming to us for jobs. We can offer you (pause for effect) twenty-five shillings a week (this slowly and deliberately, savouring every word). You must be prepared to work hard, plenty of opportunities here for advancement . . . show what you’re worth . . . etc., etc.”

Obviously his idea of “getting on” was a bit different from mine. I bid him a polite goodday and got a job elsewhere —at two pounds a week. When I look back on that first encounter (there have been a few since then) I’m inclined to wonder if  the mincing little man is still with his firm, so diligently guarding his boss’s interests. Certainly he was only putting a line which is as old as the hills and which is trotted out just as much today as ever it was. Many workers do believe it, however, and spend their lives trying to show their boss what they are worth; only the boss’s assessment invariably falls short of theirs. Which is a big snag and shows that the strength of your bargaining position is what matters, not the strength of your moral arguments.

But now look at the other side of the coin. William Davis, Guardian financial editor and a man prone to moralising lectures in his column, on how much harder we must all work, has been asking “How much is a company chairman worth?” On February 5th he gave a table showing the average payment to directors of various big firms, the figures ranging from £9,800 to £38,500 a year. But the thing to notice was the absence of any moralising sentiment in answering his own question, thus:

Business men should he made to feel proud of high salaries. The ambition of lower-paid people should be to equal them, not to show jealousy. 

I never really understood why there was so much fuss about the £24,000 a year paid to Dr. Beeching ... on simple business grounds alone, it was a good price.

To which every capitalist politician will say Amen. I don't think they will be saying quite the same thing, though, in the next few weeks when some of those "lower-paid people." like bus and railway workers, push for higher wages. That's not quite the sort of equalising ambition Mr. Davis has in mind.

Up, Up, Up It Goes

I have before me some cuttings taken at random from newspapers over about one week in January. They are all about the same problem—crime in its various forms, crime major or petty, but crime nevertheless Over two thousand London telephone boxes wrecked by vandals, gang attacks on transport lorries, drug peddling, robbery with violence. The list is as long as your arm. and very depressing.

“We are determined to stamp this out,” says a magistrate to a phone box wrecker. “You may expect long prison sentences," says the Lord Chief Justice Lord Parker, in a blanket warning to dope peddlers. How many times have we heard this sort of remark? And still the crime situation worsens. Home Secretaries have come and gone, but crime, it seems, goes on for ever. Mr. Roy Jenkins is the latest to try his hand. “I intend to mount a sustained and effective attack on crime," he is reported as saying at Hull on January 17th.

He proposes to "give the police every support, best equipment." etc, which may make them more efficient at crime detection, but will never solve the problem itself. And what of the criminals themselves? They will be modernising their methods, just like the police, using the means which current science puts at their disposal, so that in a few years time yet another Home Secretary will be saying he is going to wipe out crime.

Why is it so persistent, and defiant of efforts to end or even check it? Basically it is a fight over property of some kind. Even the apparent senseless hooliganism of ripped train seats has behind it a blind resentment towards property owned by someone else. And since no Home Secretary ever aims to remove private property society, crime stays stubbornly with us.

Gaspers

“Before independence we ensured that our army, civil service and judiciary were insulated from politics." (President Azikiwe of Nigeria. 16.1.66—just after seizure of power by Major-General Ironsi.)

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: On The Bomb (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

On The Bomb

What sort of picture does that title paint for you? Probably one of unparalleled destruction and misery, of thousands of people wiped out in a matter of minutes; of a shadow of mixed gloom and terror which has darkened the world ever since those fateful days in early August, 1945, when the fruits of the hideous “Manhattan Project” were delivered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I well remember the giant newspaper headlines and the sloppy, hypocritical editorials, bleating about “international control” of this new super weapon, saying how it could be perhaps a “force for peace” if it were kept “in the right hands,” etc, and expressing thanks that it had at least been used to speed the end of the war against Japan and save many allied lives. This has since been nailed as a lie, and the fact made known that the war was kept going in face of Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations, so that the bomb could be dropped. Nevertheless, the lie is often repeated by capitalist politicians, plus the new one that the bomb is necessary as a deterrent to “the other side,” so that this uneasy lull they call peace can be maintained.

Socialists think it is a tragedy that workers in any part of the world should lose their lives in the defence of capitalism’s interests, and this has typified our attitude to all weapons of war. But to the patriotic British or American worker in 1945 it was a case of “Thank God we got there first!” Well, now the wheel has turned quite a few times and the nuclear club numbers five members, with others like India and West Germany wondering whether to join. In the past 20 years the bomb has become a diplomatic weapon of the first importance; one might almost call it a first-class admission ticket to any of the top international conference tables.

It is against such a background that you should consider movements of protest like CND, which have sprung up in this and other countries over the past few years. When we say that these movements must fail, this is not to underestimate the sincerity of many of their members. It is simply that they take no account of the social conditions which have fostered such horrors as the bomb. The roots of war, atomic or otherwise, are in the capitalist system and none of its conflicts yet have been fought with kid gloves.

Once born, man's atomic knowledge cannot be destroyed. It will be refined and developed, and under capitalism perverted for base ends. Within private property society there is no sensible meaning to the term "for peaceful purposes". Only in a Socialist world could we guarantee that atomic energy would be used solely for human welfare, and the monstrosities of nuclear bombs be but a ghastly memory.

The shock of going out to work

I never used to believe my parents when they told me that my schooldays were the happiest days of my life. I began to believe them in earnest on the first day I went out to work. Not that school life is that much of an uplifting experience, as we know; for most of us it is only a training for the workaday world we have to face at some stage in our adolescence. But when that world at last closes round us and the irrevocable step has been taken, we realise with a sudden jolt that the comparatively carefree days of short hours and long holidays are gone for good.

From now on we begin to covet those two or three weeks of holiday a year and the precious evening and weekend leisure hours. Suddenly we seem to be too short of spare time to do the things we’d like to do—neither do we have the necessary cash—and we begin to find the restrictions of factory and office routine irksome to say the least. Perhaps we haven’t yet grasped the full impact of what has happened, but sooner or later the awful truth begins to dawn on us that this is the beginning of our wage earning years, stretching away before us through a lifetime of care and struggle. 

There is the job, and a pay packet at the end of the week or month, and the terrifying prospect of doing something we don’t want to do for the next 40-odd years. Many people try to dodge the issue by changing jobs when the boredom gets too acute, and it’s nothing unusual for boys and girls nowadays to have had a whole series of employers within a year or two of leaving.school. But whichever way we turn, the black ogre of wage slavery confronts us, devouring the peak years of our lives in dull unfulfilling and often stultifying activity. No wonder we set such store by our spare time. It’s usually the only part of the day we can even think about doing something which really interests us.

For work under capitalism is not a means of expressing and developing ourselves to the full. It is merely a means of getting a living wage, and for the employer of course of getting his profits. And this state of affairs is doing a lot of harm to a lot of workers everywhere.

On Authority 

In Ludovic Kennedy’s book on the Stephen Ward Trial, there is an interesting paragraph or two on the functions and activities of “The Establishment” in a time of crisis. It was Kennedy’s contention that whatever Ward’s morality he had committed no legal offence, but had roused the wrath of those in authority by ratting on his former politician friend Profumo. The scandal rocked the government at the time, but says Kennedy, the Establishment closed its ranks and earmarked Ward for special treatment.

Socialists have long realised the ability of the ruling class to stand together when the occasion demands, and ruthlessly destroy anyone who threatens to bring its authority into public ridicule and contempt. For mass loyalty and “respect for their betters” by the working class is certainly essential to our masters if they are to get support for (or at least acquiescence in) the continuation of their system of privilege and exploitation.

Our press and politicians will try to tell us that this is “our” country and that we have a vested interest in being proud of it. In support, they will point to the various institutions, such as the Church and Royal Family, which we can look up to because they are supposed to be above “sectional interests” and therefore bind us all together in common interest. And although risqué jokes may be tossed about at times, this version dished out by authority is generally accepted by workers.

Now both the Church and the Royal Family are exceedingly rich and are symbolic of private property society, and for this reason alone would earn the Socialist Party’s hostility; but it would not really be true to say that they are above politics. True, they make no political pronouncements but they are part of the constitutional set-up in Great Britain and are expected to co-operate with the government in its day-to-day administration of capitalism. The Queen, for example, signs Parliamentary Bills, calls Privy Council meetings and generally does what she’s told. Neither the Monarch nor the Church has any power to resist the will of the capitalist class. That matter was settled a long time ago.

Which in itself is an answer to those who advocate a republic. Whether or not the Monarchy has any power makes precious little difference to the essential division of wealth and the subject position of the working class. France, U.S.A. and Russia, for example, all operate without a monarchy. And they are just as much capitalist states as Britain or Sweden.

Gaspers

“A Labour Government will not be a soft option.” (Jim Northcott, in Why Labour. Penguin Books, 1963).

“My politics were confused. 1 was a Liberal-Radical, a Tory-Democrat and a Fabian Socialist.” (Harold Macmillan—The Winds of Change).

“He (Mr. Wilson) has put aside promises now. He is giving us threats instead. Why? The fact is that he simply has no choice. Britain (like it or not) is a capitalist country, living in a predominantly capitalist world.” (Charles Curran, Evening News, 15.7.66).

“This journal will do anything in its power, short of betraying its principles, to support a Labour government.” (New Statesman. 15.7.66).

“Labour members must realise how wrong they are to describe stop-go as Tory policy. It has been the policy of all governments since the war.” (Selwyn Lloyd, Commons debate. 27.7.66).

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: The Lady and the Tramp . . . and all that (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lady and the Tramp . . . and all that

Ryde on the Isle of Wight on one of the many disappointingly wet and blustery days of an English summer. Holidaymakers sit disconsolately in the numerous Egg and Chip cafes, or gaze gloomily from the seedy seafront shelters at the unfriendly grey sky, bored stiff.

But there is one man who seems quite indifferent to the weather or to the unfriendly stares of some, who no doubt resent the smell that clings about him. He is a tramp, a caricature of a human being, with a mane of iron-grey hair and big blue eyes, whose battered clothes are secured about him with strips of tape and lumps of coarse string. There on a low wall he sits in the open, doggedly reading an old copy of The Times.

In a pub that evening, a brassy haired woman expresses her disgust at the mere existence of such people, and listening to the talk, you learn that this one is always on the island, wandering from place to place throughout the year. Unlike many tramps, though, he is by no means penniless because (or so the story goes) his family pay him enough money to keep him out of their way.

But what the lady in the pub overlooks is that there are a few thousand like him in Great Britain alone (and the number is growing) and she probably never stops to ask herself why this is so. Perhaps she feels that he is an affront to her meagre dignity, or perhaps he is an uncomfortable reminder of the loneliness that is always stalking in the background for all of us under capitalism, so that no one knows just when it will engulf him.

Tramps, it has been said, are what they are because they cannot face the harsh realities of everyday life in the modern world. So they take to the road and go on the run from it all, rarely staying long in one place, alone with their rags and their thoughts, objects of a mixed pity, fear and resentment from the population in general, and condescension from the “do gooders" in particular.

There’s certainly something to be said for such a theory, though of course it does not go far enough, and misses out a very important fact. Our man in Ryde notwithstanding, the mass of tramps are very poor—a lot of them from the very lowest income groups in the working class—and it is one of the big factors which makes them turn and run. For them, loneliness is not new by the time they start their wanderings, and in many cases it is a choice of near-destitutions, static or mobile. To sleep under a hedge with newspapers for bedclothes, or alone in a damp and dingy room with crumbling walls and vermin for company— and the worry of finding next week’s rent. The loneliness of their lives is theirs in ample measure, of course, but as one vagrant said to a survey interviewer, “it’s not so bail when you're out in the open . . . Four walls bring it home to you . . .” 

But don’t go making the mistake that loneliness is for tramps only. It is fast becoming a really big problem of the sixties. Armand Georgés in a little booklet Modern Loneliness has estimated that there are over four million lonely people in Britain and it is a terrible fact that it affects all age groups, from children to “senior citizens”.

This booklet is not a very satisfactory work and barely skims over the problem, but it does at least touch on the causes, such as: —

The uniformity of council house estates . . . the demands of work and economic difficulties produce a feeling of boredom and boredom is the first symptom of the the disease . . . 

Seventy years of age, he lived in digs. When he became ill he went into hospital, but although he recovered he still remains there because his landlady will not take him back. She has let his room . . .

Mr. Georgés admits that loneliness “cannot penetrate useful work and emotional stability" but further than this he doesn’t go, perhaps because he is vaguely aware of the difficulty of attaining these conditions in the world of today. So he contents himself with suggestions of more clubs, meeting places, etc., and a government “ministry for the aged".

So let us say what we think of the problem. Loneliness, boredom and emotional strains are a product of private property society, and modern capitalism has brought them to a terrifying pitch. It has been said that we are all on our own in capitalism and it is not difficult to see why. In such a set-up, we are all thrown into ceaseless competition with each other so that satisfactory contact between human beings is a rarity.

The problem is accentuated in the big towns, of course, where the narrow and unfulfilling lives of workers is so much in evidence, like the couple above. And for those who are lonely, the very bigness of the towns, crammed to capacity with other humans (mainly workers) though they are, restricts their chances of ever belonging anywhere. It is a poverty in human friendship and contact, a direct result of poverty in the means of life from which most or us suffer.

Sing something simple

An old copy of the Gibraltar Chronicle dropped out of a file the other day and promptly found its way into my pocket. It's dated Nov. 9th, 1949 and what do you think appears on the front page? Well, among other things is a bold headline: “T.U.C. leaders will fully support Govt’s policy". There follows a report of the T.U.C.’s decision in London “after seven weeks of anxious discussion” to “give full support to the Labour Government’s policy of greater production at less cost". This, by the way, was after the devaluation of Sterling—with its effect of price increases—yet still the T.U.C. was prepared to recommend an "even greater effort to keep demands for higher wages under restraint . . .”

Well, it's old news now. but it does us no harm to look back a few years and see the similarity between ideas then and now. The T.U.C. seems to have learned precious little in the past seventeen years, if a statement by their general secretary George Woodcock is any guide:

If in the early days you can emphasise increased productivity or prices or social justice as the main objectives, you are just kidding yourself. You can, as we are doing, get some degree of incomes restraint, rough and ready and unscientific though it is. You can expect to do that quickly. The other things will take time.

Did 1 say that little had been learnt? If a minus quantity, of knowledge were possible, Mr. Woodcock and the T.U.C. would certainly have it.

Bigger and better bedbugs

When we were kids my parents waged a long and largely futile battle against bedbugs in our poky terraced house in London. Fumigation, creosote, and even blow-lamps all had a temporary effect only, and there they were as thick as ever in a week or two. Wc got rid of them eventually because for some months during the blitz, we didn't use the bedrooms. I suppose they all died of starvation, or went looking elsewhere.

Now what do you think of a Guardian report of June 6th? The U.S. is planning to use bedbugs against the Vietcong. But these will be specially bred for the purpose and won’t be starved to death so easily. Just look at this revolting account.

". . . Plans are based on the fad that bedbugs scream with excitement at the prospect of feeding on human flesh. So what Mr. McNamara's whizz-kids are up to is trying to produce a sound amplification system which would enable the G.l. . . . to hear the anticipatory squeals of a captive bedbug as it detects the Vietcong lying in ambush ahead . . . A large and hungry bedbug will . . . register the presence of a man some 200 yards to its front or side while ignoring the person carrying it in a special capsule".

When we have pointed to the brutality and degradation of capitalism’s wars, understandably we have tended to stress the bigger horrors like nuclear bombs, but it is perhaps the so-called smaller things like this which illustrate the depths to which men sink their dignity in the cause of the profit motive.

Gaspers

Comrade Mao Tse Tung is the greatest genius of our lime. Rarely has history seen such a revolutionary leader as Mao Tse Tung . . . (Peking People's Daily 15.6.66). '

There is not and never was a man in the world of so varied, so rich, so fruitful and so omnipresent a genius . . . (Tribute to Stalin, by Moscow Radio. May Day 1951),

Mr. Robinson said . . . he would prefer a bigger building programme for the (hospital) service . . . but the amount of money available had to depend on the economic progress of the country. (Guardian 25.6.66).

The very idea of auto sales and auto profits has been built on a pile of corpses. (Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe At Any Speed, Guardian report 15.6.66).

In the foreseeable future, the only alternative future to an incomes policy is higher unemployment. (Guardian editorial 5.7.66).

I have never fell humiliated (T .U.C. General Secretary George Woodcock 5.7.66).

Eddie Critchfield

Gaspers (1967)

From the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Czechoslovakia to create an internal money market (Financial Times, 24 May 1967).

“We will not unite with people whose aim is our disruption” (Draft resolution for conference of the Young Communist League).

“The Churches could make a great contribution to swing the African from his traditional attitude towards labour, and to teach him to work harder and to work regularly, the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, Mr. Botha, said … ‘I think that in this connection the Churches can be of great help, and that is, when rendering spiritual services, they must stress the value of sustained labour. In fact, it should be done in respect of the Whites as well…’ ” (Star, Johannesburg, 31 March 1967).

“Very regrettably a few Communist Trotskyites in certain sectors of our industry continue to mislead the good craftsmen and operatives … These Trotskyites, professional militants and other extremists whose only aim is disruption and to mislead good honest workers, are shockers” (Frank Taylor, chief of the Taylor Woodrow group in his annual report to shareholders, 17 May 1967).

“One man—one vote”, he said, would lead the country to a state of complete and utter chaos. A street sweeper would have as much say in running the country as the most brilliant and educated person. “No one could believe this to be right, “he added (Ian Smith, reported in Financial Times, 23 May 1967).

The Government’s policies have cut the standard of living of a great many workers. (The Observer—28.5.61).

… conquest is not internationally accepted as the way of changing frontiers (The Times—7.6.67).

Coffee seedlings burned

“Over 300.000 coffee seedlings were uprooted and burned on a nursery near Nairobi today as the first step in the Agriculture Ministry’s plan to restrict coffee production.

Mr. G. R. Medforth, the Kenya Coffee Board’s chief inspector, who supervised the burning, said about one million — or 20 per cent — of the plants in nurseries throughout the country were surplus and would be burned. Growers would get compensation.” The Times, 25.5.67.

The Passing Show: May Day, May Day (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day, May Day

Definitions: (1) A radio distress signal, repeated at rapid intervals, for ships at sea. (2) A working class distress signal, repeated at yearly intervals. It's the second definition which concerns us. You want me to justify it? Of course it’s not the way that Labourites and other left wingers will look at it when they assemble once again this year for their processions. To them it will be a fine opportunity to make the usual protestations of “solidarity’’, “peace”, “progress" and so on, with workers abroad which, for all the fire and eloquence with which they may be delivered, will be vague, empty, and not worth the ink that's used to print them in the next day’s newspapers.

May Day demonstrations began with the passing of a resolution by the Second International Working Men’s Association in 1889 to set aside the First of May as a workers holiday, so that mass demonstrations could be made to affirm the international solidarity of labour. But solidarity for what? Workers may have avowed such solidarity in 1889, but there was precious little of it in 1914, except perhaps in the only place where nationality didn’t count—in the grave. It has been the same story many times since then to some extent or another, yet down the years the farce of the May Day ritual has been observed.

But a “distress signal” I called it. Well, take a look at some of the things they will be talking about this time. Vietnam? Wages? The Bomb? Pensions? Housing? A superficial conclusion might be that the scope of May Day has broadened since the early days, yet really all these issues can be put under the headings of War and The Poverty of Labour, both inseparable from capitalism and very distressing indeed. Taken collectively they represent a massive S.O.S., a cry for help from a working class floundering in a sea of bewilderment. But the orators who thump the tubs in Hyde Park and elsewhere are just as ignorant as the listening crowds of the way to answer the cry. There is a lifeline which is there for the grasping, but it cannot be thrown by such as the Labour and Communist Parties; it is the lifeline of Socialist knowledge. When the working class have reached out for that, in no time at all they can haul themselves high, dry and safe, to a new world.

Sing, Bing

The wheel has turned a full cycle and Mr. Geoffrey Bing, Q.C. is back in Britain again. This is the man who was once Labour MP for Hornchurch and who climbed aboard the Ghanaian bandwagon when it began to roll some years ago, becoming Dr. Nkrumah’s principal legal adviser. He wasn't the only one to support that vicious and repressive regime of course, but although the two press interviews he gave at the end of March were noteworthy for the evasiveness of his replies to questions, at least he did say something. The other individuals and organisations in this country who hailed the new state, and incidentally sneered at us for refusing it our blessing, have all been conspicuously silent.

Now, what did our ex-Labour hero have lo say when he got back home? If we accept his version at its face value, whoever was to blame for the disturbing things that went on during Nkrumah's reign, it was certainly not Mr. Bing. He was “not there” when the notorious Preventive Detention Bill was announced in the Ghana Parliament. He was “ill” at the time of Nkrumah’s removal of the Chief Justice, and so on . . . He didn’t say what he was doing in November 1963, when the Preventive Detention Act was amended to increase considerably the government’s already harsh powers. He does seem to have learned, though, how unpleasant prison can be (“the actual physical conditions of prisons in Ghana are deplorable”), and how nasty it is to be “manhandled by soldiers” (his wife had that experience). Perhaps some of the five-year detainees could have told him all about those sorts of things if they’d been let out in time. However, that’s the snag with supporting dictatorships; the boomerang sometimes hits you before you have time to get out of the way.

“I have supported ideas and not individuals,” said Mr. Bing on March 28 in a final disclaimer. Ah, yes. Thats the crux of the whole matter, and if Mr. Bing had not said it, we would have had to say it for him. indeed he has supported ideas, and always the wrong ones just like every other Labour MP. True, not every member of his former party would be a deliberate supporter of dictatorships just like that, but so long as capitalism lasts, there is always the threat of it sometime, somewhere. And no capitalist politician can ever be entirely above suspicion in that respect. Even the best of intentions are derided and destroyed in the capitalist jungle, so that the democrat of today (perhaps without realising it at the time) is often a trainee for the dictatorship of tomorrow.

This is where we came in

Take heart, Lord Robens and others Who supported nationalisation of the mines in 1947. You think you have problems with falling coal demand and competition from oil? Well, so have others: this time it’s the West German coal owners who are running into trouble and are actually being paid by their government to take pits out of production. On March 17th, The Guardian described the Bonn government’s actions as “. . . measures . . . designed to help the coal industry to adjust itself to the realities of industrial life.” Which is a nice way of saying “no profit—no production”, no matter if some people do go short of warmth this winter. Incidentally, it does illustrate one point contrary to Tory claims; and that is that the profitability of an industry is not realty affected by whether it’s nationalised. It’s the current market conditions that count.

But don’t get too shocked or surprised at the news from Germany, will you. Governments often act in this way. A few years back, the British textile industry got the treatment, and before that American agriculture. Yet there are plenty of ill clothed and ill fed people around, aren’t there? Profit is the raison d'etre as far as capitalism is concerned, not human need.

Gaspers

“Just because you caught me polishing my Rolls-Royce doesn’t mean I’m a Tory. I'll vote Labour.” (Man at Morden Hill. Guardian report 16.3.66.)

‘‘While we act to suppress the ugly activities, if anyone dies we shall not be bothered." (Indian Premier Mrs. Gandhi. 16.3.66.)

"He (the Tory) must persuade a substantial mass of the voters . . . to identify the defence of their own interests and values with the defence of privileges which are—and are likely to remain—beyond their reach." (Why I am voting Tory, by Henry Fairlie. Observer 20.3.66.)

"A Conservative speculative builder in Cambourne this weekend described Mr. Wilson as "the nearest thing we’ve had to Churchill." (Peter Jenkins, Guardian 21.3.66.)

"I have a feeling that . . . voters are getting much more shrewd.' (Leonard Beaton. Guardian 30.3.66.)

The Passing Show: Pensions and Hypocrisy (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pensions and Hypocrisy 

I am looking at the Labour Party's manifesto for the 1964 General Election. In the section dealing with “social security”. I see:—

For those already retired and for widows, an Incomes Guarantee will be introduced. This will lay down a new national minimum benefit. Those whose incomes fall below the new minimum will receive as of right, and without recourse to National Assistance, an income supplement.

Now I will ignore for the moment the fact that it was the previous Labour Government which introduced the “means-tested National Assistance benefits” as the same booklet dubs them a few lines further up the same page. Nor will I make too much of the information (given by Assistance Board Chairman Lord Runcorn, in May) that some 71 percent of the total of weekly allowances made were to elderly people, about 1,386,000 of them at the end of last year. I will ignore all this, if only to avoid having to listen to the tedious reply that pensions have already been raised by a few bob and that anyway there has not been time yet to introduce more far-reaching measures.

Whatever their intentions may have been, the Labour Party never seemed in much doubt before the election of the plight in which many pensioners found themselves. Indeed, it was only the Tories who, in face of umpteen surveys of one kind or another and a mass of statistics, tried to pretend that pensioners were not so badly off; and they lost the election anyway. Labour’s policy was to exploit this situation and promise to remedy it.

And what do you think would be the way to do it—that’s if you are naive enough to think that such problems can be dealt with effectively under capitalism? Why, to give the pensioners an immediate and very, very substantial increase, of course. And if you are that innocent, you may think that this is Labour’s intention any day now. But you would be wrong, very wrong. After donkey’s years of books, pamphlets and enough newspaper cuttings on the subject to fill a library, all we get is—just another survey.

Ah, but you haven’t heard the best of it yet. This survey really has the edge on all the others. Just listen: —

. . . 11,000 pensioners in Britain are to be interviewed to see how they are managing and to find out any difficulties they may be having, the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance said yesterday.

(Guardian, 14.5.65.)

Just read those words again slowly and savour the full, damnable impertinence of them. And when you have stopped gasping at their sheer unctious condescension perhaps, with me, you will view them as just another exercise in the hypocrisy in which all governments dabble. On one hand, there will be efforts to give the impression of earnest and helpful action, and on the other a nett result, as far as the pensioners are concerned, of nothing. And if by now the Ministry do not know the sort of ’’difficulties they may be having”, then they must be deaf and blind to a scandal which has been common knowledge for years.

Old age pensioners are generally out of the run of productivity so beloved of capitalism’s economists and politicians, and that’s why they are chucked on to the scrap heap. It also explains why they are so conspicuously unsuccessful in their efforts to secure any worthwhile improvement in their miserable lot. They just haven’t the bargaining power of their younger brothers and sisters who are still at work.

But they do have a vote and there are some millions of them, so they cannot be ignored entirely. This explains why the Labour Party, among others, is careful to include them in its election pledges, only to try and fob them off with a crumb or two and a patronising pat on the head afterwards. Yes, pensioners are at the bottom of the priority list, and capitalism will see that they stay there.

Nothing is sacred

When he was a Labour M.P.. Lord (then Mr.) Brockway talked once in the Commons on the sacredness of a newly born child. No doubt he believed what he said, and if you were to ask many people about this today, they would probably agree with him.

While not denying that these attitudes may be all very worthwhile within the limitations of their social conditions, we should not deceive ourselves that childhood is really considered all that sacred in a modern capitalist-society. True, the young ones are given extra attention by the authorities, but the outstanding reason for this is that they are soon to become the new workers, and capitalism has long learned the need of an assured supply of labour power. But sacredness? Not on your life.

If you have any doubts on this, try to find an hour to waste watching commercial TV at some time or the other. Note the frequent interruptions for adverts, and in particular the number of times they feature children—some of them little more than toddlers. Children cramming revolting quantities of sweets into their mouths, children guzzling gallons of soft drinks—both very questionable from a health point of view, or children talking in a most unchildish manner about the effect of this or that detergent on Mummy’s hands (silly Mummy believes it too, apparently). The firms who purvey this rubbish are well aware of the feelings of tenderness which are roused in an adult by the sight of a child, and they exploit them quite shamelessly in the name of that which is sacred before all else—the profit motive.

If you think this is far fetched, take a more critical look at that TV screen next time. Nothing is left untouched; wherever human feelings can be publicised to commercial advantage, the ad-man digs his claws in deep. His subjects range wide, from boy and girl love to the pride of a housewife in a basketful of clean clothes at the end of a washday (Alan Freeman exercises a particularly obnoxious technique here).

And have you got a tiger in your tank? This is perhaps the most blatant of the advertising stunts yet, and to all accounts it has paid off very handsomely. Maybe the sheer cheek of it has had something to do with its success—free publicity through the sticker on the car window— and here again, the kids do not escape. Listen to Miss Molly Tarrant (“Mass observation and motivational research specialist”) in The Guardian on May 31st: —

Children might have something to do with it . . . Many drivers will agree to put a sticker on if their children ask for it . . . although often the driver uses the children as an excuse.

No, nothing is sacred under capitalism, except the profit motive, which is not after all surprising. If capitalism is to be assured of continuous and unfailing support by its workers, then the necessary indoctrination in its debased standards must start at the earliest possible age, in all sorts of ways—some more subtle than others.

Gaspers

“Rising prices are no new phenomenon. They have faced every government since the war, as an intractable problem, to which no solution has yet been found.’’ (Mr. George Brown—Commons debate 12.5.65.)

“China is conducting necessary nuclear tests . . . and is developing the nuclear weapon for the purpose of . . . abolishing all nuclear weapons.” (Chinese communique, following their second atomic explosion, 14.5.65)

“Both our countries are totally opposed to the use of force for the settlement of international disputes.” (Indian Premier Mr. Shastri, speaking in Moscow 12.5.65.)

“In the held of National Assistance the number of clients today, at nearly two million, is undoubtedly much greater than Beveridge envisaged it would be." (Lord Runcorn, National Assistance Board Chairman, 15.5.65.)

The Passing Show: The Blame Game (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ignorant will blame anyone or anything for a problem, without any worthwhile evidence. He will blame the weather for his corns and the moon for his madness. and the “blacks” for just about every social evil afflicting us today. The "blacks” have taken the place of the Jews. Irish and Welsh as a focus of the bigot's vehemence and hatred when he tries to account for problems which one government after another has failed to solve. At sometime or another in the past few years I have heard coloured workers blamed for: unemployment, bad housing, low wages, sexual depravity and very recently for the worsening traffic problem. Yes, one workmate even chucked that one into the pot for good measure.

The other scapegoat minorities of former days must be sighing with relief that for a change it is not their backs that are being beaten, but if the racialist ever gets through with hating coloured workers, we may be sure that some other minority will be in for it. The fascist-minded worker — let us not mince our words — clings to these spurious ideas from a twofold purpose. First of all, he can dismiss any social evil with a wave of his mental hand, by blaming the selected scapegoat. To blame is easy; it avoids the tedious job of hard thinking. Then again, spleen and anger are handy ways of working off the frustration which life under capitalism causes him, but which he has no idea how to tackle. To rant, snarl and blame are his stock-in-trade, to scratch under the surface and try to explain — never.

But how many outwardly calm and reasonable people fall for this sort of stuff? A good many I should say, if Smethwick is anything to go by, although perhaps they would shy off supporting an avowedly fascist party. The man who blamed darkies for the traffic congestion was one such as this. A very even- tempered, quietly spoken, even reticent chap, likeable in a dull and uninteresting way, but harbouring the same sort of misconception about capitalism’s problems as any fanatical hot-gospeller of race hatred.

It is anyway the same basic attitude—see a problem—think up a theory—and then try and make the facts fit it. Such is the stuff on which fanaticism and bigotry thrive. All capitalist politicians use this method to some extent at some time or another. The tragedy is that it goes down so well with the average audience.

Gaspers

 

"Give generously . . . He did" — Churchill Memorial Fund Slogan.

“The Minister for Economic Affairs drove home his point — that Labour wanted to create a Britain for which non-Socialists could be persuaded to vote"

(Guardian report 3.5.65).

“I will never so long as I am Minister of Defence be a party to putting British. soldiers, sailors and airmen into action without the tools of their job.” (Denis Healey, 2.5.65.)

“An incomes policy is part of the price we ought to be willing to pay to ensure that men and women are kept at work." (James Callaghan—Chancellor of the Exchequer. 2.5.65.)

Eddie Critchfield

Gaspers (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We are confident we will be able to convince the Ministry of Labour that the productivity will be far in excess of anything we are likely to get from railway management” (N.U.R. Secretary, Sidney Greene, on a bonus agreement with British Rail. 4.4.67).

#    #    #    #

“Her Majesty is quite safe with the Labour Party.” (Emanuel Shinwell, Daily Telegraph report 10.4.67).

#    #    #    #

“Just as in the Stage of Leninism one could not be a Marxist if he were not a Leninist, so today one cannot be called a Marxist-Leninist if he does not master the thought of Mao-Tse-Tung." (Italian Journal — quoted in The Marxist).

#    #    #    #

“We have suggested £5 might be a reasonable figure. We know that when elderly people have to go into homes or hospitals it costs a great deal more than £5 a week to keep them”. (Labour M.P. Hamling, on payment to single women with dependent relatives, 13.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“The Government's decision to pay high salaries to the managers of the nationalised steel industry is sensible, and was probably inevitable too”. (Guardian editorial 16.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“There is no way to my mind of identifying the lowest paid” (£15,000 a year P.I.B. Chairman, Aubrey Jones, 16.3.67).

The Passing Show: Radio Rot (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Radio Rot

I have to make an admission that I do like listening to the radio—and watching the TV, too, when I get the chance, which, as I don't have a TV set, is not very often. Of course, you have to use discrimination in choice of programmes and learn to resist the mesmeric effect of the box. There is, after all, a little switch on one side and this must be firmly turned off if you are not to sit through programmes such as "Take Your Pick" with Michael Miles or “Juke Box Jury" with David Jacobs. This was a cruel lesson I learned when I did have a set, but maybe there was some value in watching them once or twice—a sort of immunisation process.

Of course, not all the radio and telly programmes are “light,” at least not intentionally so. There are some pretty good documentary features which are useful as far as they go, and the B.B.C. does encourage some controversial discussions in programmes like “Any Questions.” And they can be quite enjoyable providing you don’t get too het up at the puerile questions which they deal with in all solemnity. If you are a Socialist, you will naturally feel it just that much more acutely.

For a Socialist is so very aware of the really big problems of the world and how to solve them, that it must be like twisting the knife in a wound to hear the questions panel heatedly discussing whether Bernard Levin should be more polite or whether gambling winnings should be taxed. The piffling, inconsequential drivel that some of the “personalities" talk at a time when millions are starving and the world is dangerously close to a third big war, has to be heard to be believed. Even the “serious" commentators rarely get anywhere near a fundamental consideration of the way we live today.

But after all is said and done, it should be no more than we expect. The BBC, ITV, Pirate Pops as well, can only in the main reflect public interest and as we are all too painfully aware, this does not include a serious consideration of the Socialist case. Which is the real reason behind the consistent refusal of the powers-that-be to grant time on the air to our Party. When Socialist ideas are much more widely accepted and discussed we will not have to pester the authorities for a measly five minutes. They will be asking us instead.

Goodbye to the Afternoon Nap 

It is just another of the many nasty tendencies of capitalism that it is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to abolish or whittle down those of our leisurely customs which interfere with production and profits. In our December issue, we recalled how the 12 days of Christmas was very quickly reduced to one when the industrial revolution got under way, and although we get more than one day nowadays, it is nowhere near the original number. But even then, we were wrong to take it. according to some newspapers who seem to place the national productivity drive before all else.

Then again, some of our older readers may recall the circumstances under which pub licensing hours in this country were restricted. When my father was a boy, the public houses were usually open all day. some from 6am till midnight, but the First World War stopped all that. It was found that there was a tendency for munitions workers to spend their overtime earnings over the bar and to miss some of their shifts, so the licensing hours were severely curtailed and remained essentially so until fairly recently when there were minor revisions. Nothing really to do with any concern for our health—this time it was munitions production which caused the axe to be wielded.

No doubt you can think of other examples such as the shifting of May Day to the first Sunday in the month, and thus you might be inclined to think that it's a good job workers have struggled over the years to increase the paid holidays allowed by their individual employers.

Britain is not, of course, the only country where the cry is for more work and less leisure. You would never have thought that the afternoon siesta, such a part of life for those in hotter countries, would go: yet this is what looks like happening in Chile. The government there has decreed that the four hour lunch period be reduced to 30 minutes, and that all bars close between mid-day and 7pm each day.

Perhaps, as the Evening Standard editorial of January 8th pointed out, somewhat slyly, the indigestion pill manufacturers will do a roaring trade and the ruling class will get some increased production and profits. But for the Chilean workers it is the same sad story of the reduction of their leisure time and per- haps an increase in stomach ulcers. For as the Evening Standard also points out: "A half-hour hastily snatched lunch breeds ulcers faster than almost anything else in the world.”

More New Year Hypocrisy

It was perhaps in the nature of capitalist polities that the late premier of India, Mr. Shastri, should receive praises and tributes following his death on January 11th. With China breathing hotly down their necks, there had been strenuous efforts by USSR to patch up the India-Pakistani quarrel and Mr. Shastri's death occurred only a few hours after he had signed a peace agreement with the Pakistan president Ayub Khan.

Doubtless it came as a shock to various statesmen, not least the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr. Kosygin, but Shastri's demise is not likely to have any great or lasting effect on the world situation, despite the sloppy tributes of Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson. The U.S. President was true to his usual hypocritical form when he spoke of the news as “a tragic blow to the hopes of mankind for peace and progress.”

Indeed, the history of Shastri's short term as Premier (a mere 18 months or so) has been anything but peaceful. In that time he had been involved in clashes with China and Pakistan and had openly stated that his government were considering the production of a nuclear bomb. Previously he served under Nehru, whose government went to war originally with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue, and not so long ago annexed Portuguese Goa. In dealing with striking workers, Shastri’s government was just as brutal and repressive as its predecessors.

But all this you are not supposed to remember as canting politicians heap praise on the dead man’s shoulders. And the tragedy of it is that many workers will indeed not remember, even though the events were all so very recent. It is the Socialist who will bear it all in mind and point out that despite his apparent gentleness as a person, Shastri was one of Capitalism's politicians, and in that role, he was as much an enemy of the working class as Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler.

Gaspers

  “In 1960 nearly seven and a half million people in the United Kingdom were living in poverty, defined as below the National Assistance standard." (Report by Professors Smith and Townsend 23-12.65.)

  "Mr. Jack Stone, who has resigned as managing director of Lloyds Packaging Warehouses, is reported to be in line for a Golden handshake 'well in excess of £50,000'." (Guardian 10.1.66.)

  "Protecting this (copper) trade is not merely a matter of charily towards Zambia since about 45 per cent. of Britain's copper comes from the Zambian mines." (Guardian report 7.1.66.)

   ". . . Only by accepting a less ambitious full employment target will employment be brought under control." (Daily Telegraph editorial 10.1.66.)

  "Aspro-Nicholas Ltd. said last night that it was prepared to send Oxfam and War on Want £250,000 worth of tablets which were being withdrawn from the market . . .” (Guardian 11.1.66.)

   “The Duchess of Norfolk is planning a banquet for 300 dogs in the grounds of Arundel Castle, to raise funds for a stray dog Sanctuary." (Guardian 10.1.66.)

  

   ". . . Labour won the last election, and is proving a visibly non-Socialist party." (The Economist 8.1.66.)

  "Christmas, for me, is out of this world” (The Bishop of Guildford in his Christmas Day broadcast.)

Eddie Critchfield