Greasy Pole: Waiting for Poverty (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Waiting For Poverty

Two years after he set out on his historic drive to eliminate the world’s problems, starting with a few in Great Britain, it seems that Tony Blair is not impressing as many people as he would like. True, there is now a new bogeyman threatening to undermine all the humanitarian ambitions of leaders like Blair and Clinton—Milosevic in place of Saddam Hussein—and the bombs fall on Yugoslavia instead of Iraq. True, a different bunch of multi-millionaires now have a Prime Minister fawning on them at receptions and banquets in Number Ten. Was this, then, what the Labour Party meant when they bellowed, in their 1997 election manifesto, that Britain Deserves Better?

Meanwhile the Blair machine which churns out sound bites, promises and threats in about equal measure has been relentlessly at work. Very little escapes its attention. We are accustomed now to hearing the Prime Minister’s views on the week’s football results, on whether Lennox Lewis was robbed of that heavyweight boxing title, on how British pop stars are doing in competition with those from abroad. So it was something of a surprise when Blair recently departed from the usual script to dissertate on a rather more substantial issue. In a speech on 18 March, Blair had another promise to offer:

“Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty. It will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission, but I believe it can be done.”

Snag

This was pretty strong stuff—ending child poverty as distinct from alleviating it. And in only twenty years. It caused a lot of excitement among what is called the poverty lobby—those tireless organisations whose members earnestly toil to expose the extent and the effects of deeper deprivation among people, only to spoil it all by suggesting remedies, like increasing state benefits, which have been shown to be ineffective and unrealistic. Listening to Blair, many of the people in the poverty lobby must have thought that this was why they voted Labour. It seemed to go unnoticed, that in twenty years’ time Blair will probably be long out of politics. By that time his speech will be forgotten, replaced by some other politician’s promise about ending the scandal of children in desperate need.

Back in 1979 the Labour Party did not lose the election because they had been wildly successful and had conquered problems like poverty. They lost it because they had been exposed as powerless to do anything about such damaging influences on our lives. At that time we had come through a post-war period of 32 years during which the majority—17 years—had been under Labour government. Their failure can be seen in their manifesto for that election, when they said that their “. . . purpose is to overcome the evils of inequality, poverty, racial bigotry, and make Britain truly one nation”. This sounds very similar to what we are accustomed to hearing from Blair. His efforts to exploit the issue in order to win support is evidence that as the last Labour government left office poverty was still an intact blight on our lives. Twenty years later a Labour leader can talk as if his party had only just got around to thinking about it, had never been in a position to realise their promises to alleviate it. That 1979 manifesto elaborated on the circumstances which, it said, made it vital to vote Labour:

“As long as there are men and women struggling with low pay, mothers stretching the household budget to make ends meet, youngsters in search of a job, children learning in out of date classrooms, patients queuing for a hospital bed or families without a decent home—then there is work for a Labour Government.”

Facts

That was the situation in 1979 and it is the situation today. We can take our pick of the facts and the statistics which tell the grim story of the extent of poverty and what it does to the lives of people. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown recently presented a Treasury survey which showed that two in every five children are born into a “poor” household—by which he meant one where the family members live at or below the official poverty line. The Treasury has also just discovered that these conditions don’t simply evaporate with time; they are handed down, from one generation to another; 25 percent of children, they said, never escape from that level of deprivation. “The next task for the Government,” declared Brown (presumably after they have completely flattened Belgrade), “is to wage war on child poverty.”

The Children’s Society (one of those toilers in the poverty lobby) point out some facts about the concentration of the worst poverty—that the highest incidence of disadvantaged children is in just 59 local authority districts, which do not include places like Mayfair and Knightsbridge. Over twenty-five percent of the children born in those local authority areas start their life underweight, an effect of the malnourishment and lack of care of their mother during pregnancy. Their mortality rate will be 30 percent higher than children born elsewhere. When they get to school they will be disruptive in class, giving additional trouble to teachers already over-burdened, they will truant four times as much as the national average and about 150,000 of them will be excluded from school in a year. The lesson is clear—if you must be born, try not to have working class parents and not to come into the world in places like Hackney, Salford and Toxteth.

As there were high levels of deprivation twenty years ago and we now have yet another government making plans about abolishing it, we might have assumed that there would be some consciousness that the problem is rather more durable than the politicians are admitting. Blair, it is said, is bored by the whole subject—knocking hell out of Yugoslavia is probably more exciting—and will allow his eyes to glaze over if some tiresome underling raises the topic in his presence. Well of course if a problem is not only very nasty but persistent it can get tedious, especially if it affects other people rather than yourself. Perhaps it was boredom that prevented any proper mention of it in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, where there were only references to vague concepts like “higher wages and employment” and “educational and employment opportunities for all”. This was part of Labour’s obsession with getting as many people as possible into employment—into proper, regular exploitation instead of on the dole—so that they equated poverty almost solely with unemployment as if employed workers were never poor, deprived, repressed and always lived in decent homes, ate the best food, wore adequate clothes . . .

Deferred

Working class deprivation is usually worse for someone who is out of work, as it is for someone who falls ill or gets old. That is because workers have only one method of getting a living—selling their ability to work to an employer. If they can’t do that, often because there is no demand for what they produce, they don’t count in capitalism’s scheme of things. But they can’t be left to expire, which would have all manner of implications for public health and the political stability of the system and so be even more expensive than granting them the right to claim the dole. But to keep them going without being in employment is also expensive so the best solution, for politicians like Blair, is to force (he calls it “helping” ) them into a job. This government has worked hard to impose that policy—on the unemployed and on single parents and now they are starting on the sick and the disabled.

Poverty is an inescapable part of capitalist society. It can be abolished, but only when there is a fundamental change in how we organise society. That is way beyond any policies or even concepts of the Labour Party. Meanwhile we are expected to be satisfied with Blair’s version of hope deferred.

Ivan

General Election '79 (1979)

Party News from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington South & Finsbury

Islington Branch are stepping up activity in this area prior to the forthcoming General Election and would welcome assistance from other members and sympathisers. A note will appear each month of proposed activity. The following has been arranged for March.

Canvassing. Mondays, 5th and 19th. Meet Angel Tube Stn 6 p.m.

Literature Sales Drives at Chapel Market. Sunday 11th, Saturday 24th. Meet Angel Tube Stn 11 a.m.

Please bring your own supply of Socialist Standards, although copies will be available if required.

Tentative plans have been reached for printing a Manifesto and bulletins; the holding of indoor meetings etc and publication of the Manifesto in the local paper. All this needs money.

OUR TARGET IS £1,000.00. We have got off to a good start with a donation of £100 from Islington Branch.

Whilst there are many causes aimed at extracting hard earned cash from your pockets, here is one of prime importance. Will you help?

Donations, large and small please to The Treasurer, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4. — marked Parliamentary Fund. We will let you know in due course what is coming in.

Greasy Pole: Countdown To The Election (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have it on good authority – the man himself – that Tony Blair can always stifle any doubts he has about what he is doing by telling himself – and us – that it will all be sorted out, some time in the future, when he meets someone he calls his maker. That may be all very well, but the agenda for that meeting gets longer by the day. How will his maker deal with the deceit over weapons of mass destruction, the broken promises, the exposure of his image as the laid-back, informal, trustworthy favourite of the nation? Number one item to be discussed between Blair and his maker will be the question of what has been called his credibility problem.  Which, as it happens, will be central to his developing preoccupation with deciding the date of the next general election.

    

It was rather different in 2001, when the exact timing was not crucially significant because it was clear that whenever the voters were to be allowed to pass their verdict they would give New Labour another large majority. It is different now, after all those local and European election results and the recent by-elections in Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill which, however the government try to brush them aside as “a score draw”, do not exactly encourage Blair to be overweeningly optimistic. But to delay the election in the hope that things must get better because they can hardly get worse may leave the government, like Major in 1997, without any room for manoeuvre if things in fact get worse.  And there are some ominous precedents to help Blair make his mind up.

Wilson 1970

In 1970 Harold Wilson, looking back on events since his government’s crushing victory four years before, agreed with most of the “experts” that he was on course to make a final reality of his boast that the Labour Party he had fashioned had taken over the traditional Conservative role as the natural governing party of British capitalism. Just to make sure his government had taken some precautions, such as increasing welfare benefits and delaying constituency changes as recommended by the Boundary Commission which, the Tories peevishly complained, could have robbed them of up to 20 seats. “We are,” purred Wilson, “really asking for a doctor’s mandate. We’re the best doctors the country has got.” As it was World Cup year the country’s best doctor appeared on a TV sports programme as a football supporter. How many football-crazy votes would have gone Labour’s way, if England had won the Jules Rimet trophy?

    

The polls agreed – one put Labour as much as ten points ahead – and so did the bookies, who were making Labour 20-1 on for victory. On 18 June 1970 the country went to vote and on 19 June Wilson was leaving Number Ten. The Tories notched up 46.4 percent of the vote (more, in fact that New Labour in 1997 and 2001) and  a majority of 30. Ted Heath, who had been visited on the eve of poll by the Tory grandee Lord Carrington with the warning that if he lost the election he would be required to resign the leadership, was on the steps of Number Ten, thanking a somewhat stunned electorate. In fact Heath later claimed he had never doubted the result because, as he saw it, things were not all that favourable to Labour. A few days before polling the government’s complacency had been shaken by the news of a £31 million trade deficit for May (it was a time when the working class were encouraged to regard Britain’s trading balances as crucial to their interests). Heath also doubted whether Labour’s confidence about living standards was justified. On polling day unemployment was measured as the highest for 30 years. The Child Poverty Action Group (not a natural ally of a prospective Tory Prime Minister) found three-quarters of a million children living at or below the official poverty line and two million people homeless or existing in sub-standard accommodation. An unremarked error in Heath’s assessment was his assumption that workers vote straightforwardly in response to their living conditions; if this were so they would never support the Labour or Conservative parties for a start. But his is the kind of argument that suffices in the feverish, turmoiled delusions of a general election.

Callaghan 1979

In the late 1970s Jim Callaghan, whose exterior as a bluff, avuncular sailor concealed a ruthless political cunning, had to apply what might be called his talents to that same task of deciding when best to go to the polls. He could not, however, enjoy the same confidence as Wilson. In mid-1978 British capitalism’s trading balance had been superseded, as a diversion for workers who did not know where to put their cross, by the price rises which regularly eroded increases in their pay. At that time price rises were between seven and eight percent. The Labour government’s solution to the problem was to try to control pay rises as the cause of, instead of the response to, rising prices. There was much debate in the Labour Party about the advantages of delaying the election date over fixing on one in the near future. Callaghan’s government were about seven percent ahead in the polls, which also suggested that he was a more comforting figure as Prime Minister than Thatcher was likely to be. It was widely assumed the election would happen that autumn but Callaghan signalled this was not to be in typical style, when he sang to the TUC “There was I, waiting at the church . . . Can’t get away to marry you today; my wife won’t let me.” Heading a minority government, he was tired of the need to manage the persistent deals with the small parliamentary parties and hoped that by waiting he could ensure a majority.

    

But notwithstanding Callaghan’s serenade, he had miscalculated and Thatcher’s Tories came riding into power, with intentions to stop all the nonsense about wages and welfare benefits by battering the unions into compliance, with a majority of 34. It was in fact something of a continuation of Labour’s own policy in government so in that sense it was ironic that it should be the beginning of a long spell in the wilderness for Labour, with steadily increasing Conservative majorities including, in 1983, Labour’s worst result since 1931.

Blair 200?

So Blair and his analysts need to take great care, as they settle down with their history books and their statistical tables and their focus group results. They will need to balance precedence against present reality. They will need to look hard at wages, prices, mortgages, hospital waiting lists and crime. They will have no lack of evidence of capitalism’s inherent inability to work in the interests of its people, and that will be the material which they will fashion into another manifesto of promises to pacify the system’s ferocity. It is impossible to imagine them treating their labours as anything other than an exercise in sordid, power-motivated manipulation bolstered by their assumed ability to reshape facts to their own advantage.

They have,after all, had enough practice at that. Out of it all the decision will emerge, the election date will be fixed and Blair will parade it as a fearlessly generous opportunity given to us by a confident government to pronounce a verdict on New Labour in power.

    

And the voters – the working class – what about them? What do they think about the insulting assumption that they treat their right to vote so lightly that from time to time they will change it from one party to another, none of them at all effective, so that the timing of an election becomes vital to the parties of capitalism? We can do better than this, and human society is worth better than this. The next election will be a good time to start.

Ivan

Your vote means power . . . Don’t waste it on the profit system (1979)

From the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

1979 General Election Manifesto

What They Offer
For the past year a General Election has been expected and you, the voters, have been blasted from every direction by the crude sales tactics of the power-hungry political leaders. The Tories have directly conducted an estimated £l-£l¼ million campaign to sell their second-hand policies, while the Labour party have enlisted trade union leaders and union funds to convince you, the voters, to accept policies that would be intolerable coming from the Tories. Now that the election is here the political leaders grovel for your vote. THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN’S election address is different for three reasons.

1. The Socialist Party does not ask you to vote for a would-be leader but to consider the merits of a serious idea. While the other parties consider the voters too stupid to do their own thinking, we recognise and depend upon, your ability to understand our case. In fact, the Socialist Party of Great Britain asks you not to vote for us unless you are convinced by what we say.

2. The Socialist Party does not speak the same language as our political opponents. They talk about “the balance of payments problem”, “the nation”, ‘‘the good of the economy”, “law and order”. Theirs is a system in which able workers are thrown on to the scrap-heap when it periodically becomes unprofitable to employ them; in which houses stand empty while homeless families live in misery because they can't afford to pay for a home; in which food is destroyed while millions starve; in which Christian morality is preached while governments store up piles of arms to destroy the world in the quest for markets.

Socialists speak the language of class struggle; that there is a working class who produce the wealth of society in return for wages or salaries, and a capitalist class who reap the profits simply because they own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth. For Socialists the important issue in this election is—Who is to own the means of life; the wealth producers or a minority of rich parasites?

3. The Socialist Party does not offer you promises of “higher wages” or “ more welfare facilities” or “greater security”. The sad but indisputable fact is that as long as you go on supporting capitalism, its problems will be with you. A system which produces even the necessities of life for sale on the market at a profit causes poverty and insecurity for the majority alongside luxury and power for the few.

Many workers will agree that everything we’ve said so far is only too true. Yes, the other political parties ARE opportunists; yes, there IS class inequality; yes, the real problem IS capitalism. But what's the alternative?

What Socialism Is
The only alternative is Socialism. A society in which the whole community will own the means of production mid distribution of wealth. Class divisions will cease to exist, because instead of the separation between owners and producers of wealth, everyone will own and produce in common. Authoritarian leadership will give way to genuine democracy in which people will really have a say, because no longer will a minority possess power and privilege. Production for profit will be replaced by production for human needs, whereby goods will be freely available for people to take according to their needs. Work will be carried out on the basis of free co-operation instead of the coercion of the wages system. The division of nations will give way to the unity of one world. Inequality based upon possessions, status, race or sex will vanish as human beings create, for the first time ever, a sane society geared to the fulfilment of human needs. Critics of Socialism claim that given free access, people will act irresponsibly. This we dispute. It is perfectly possible for people to act sociably when a Socialist majority puts an end to the rat-race.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN is the only party in this election to stand unequivocally for Socialism—although there are others who pay lip service to the idea. Labour says that Nationalisation is Socialism, but state intervention is just another way of managing capitalism. The Communist Party says that Russia is Socialist, when it’s simply a state-capitalist dictatorship of one party. There arc even some trade union leaders who say that Socialism means “responsible wage restraint” when in fact it means the abolition of the wages system.

For the working class, the vast majority of the population, Socialism is the only alternative to the chaos of the profit system.

YOUR VOTE MEANS POWER . . . ARE YOU PREPARED TO GIVE IT ONCE AGAIN TO ONE OF THE PARTIES OF CAPITALISM . . . OR WILL YOU JOIN US IN TRANSFORMING THE SOCIALIST IDEA INTO REALITY?

Election result: They won—you lost (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now the election is over you may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was all about. Maggie is well installed in the power seat she so blatantly wanted, the Labour Party is licking its wounds, the Liberals are picking up the pieces of Steel’s Battlebus (or was it a blunderbuss) and one or two kilted academics are doing historical theses on the rise and fall of the SNP.

POST-ELECTION QUIZ
But back in the council houses and the factories, one thing has emerged; nothing much has happened. The change is in inverse proportion to the noise that the parties of capitalism made during the election campaign. Most people are still workers. So in order to brighten your day, here is a simple quiz. Here are quotes from Labour, Liberal and Tory Manifestos and material for the 1979 Election. Your job is simply to identify who said what. Answers below, together with an assessment of your results.

1. Employment
(a) The . . . will pursue policies which give a high priority to the return of full employment
(b) We need to concentrate more on the creation of conditions in which new, more modern, more secure, better paid jobs come into existence
(c) We have an unjust industrial society in which most workers are pitted against management and are denied any share in decision taking or in profits

2. Housing
(a) In the first session of the next Parliament we shall therefore, give Council and New Town tenants the legal right to buy their own homes
(b) Councils should be required to build more homes for sale
(c) . . .  does not oppose the sale of Council houses to sitting tenants who want to buy

3. Education
(a) We see education and training as a lifelong process that must be as widely available as possible to people of all ages
(b) The . . . party believes in equality of opportunity
(c) We must restore to every child, regardless of background, the chance to progress

4. The Individual
(a) Our policy will be to tilt the balance of power back to the individual and the neighbourhood, and away from the bureaucrats of Town Hall, Company Board Room, the Health Service and Whitehall
(b) Bureaucracy and powerful organisations triumph at the expense of individuals who feel powerless to influence decisions that affect them
(c) I want to expand peoples’ rights, not restrict them. I want people to have more say in their own lives

5. Europe
(a) We therefore, propose fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy to produce competitive prices, avoid structural food surpluses and encourage efficient farming
(b) Our policies for the reform of the CAP would reduce the burden which the community budget places upon the British tax payer
(c) The CAP raises serious problems for British Agriculture — distorting the balance of production; decreasing consumption through inflated prices in the shops; and stopping the industry from growing. That is why . . . seeks a fundamental reform of the CAP.

6. Law and Order
(a) We will fight against crime and violence, which affect all western societies. We will continue to back the police with proper resources and manpower
(b) The steady increase in crime can only be checked in the short run by recruiting many more police, by improving working conditions . . . having the greatest practicable number of policemen “on the beat’’ by day and night
(c) Surer detection means surer deterrents. We also need better crime prevention measures and more flexible, more effective sentences. For violent criminals and thugs, really tough sentences are necessary. But in other cases, long prison terms are not always the best deterrent

7. Environment
(a) The quality of our environment is a vital concern to all of us . . . We shall continue to give these issues a proper priority. Subject to the availability of resources we shall pay particular attention to the improvement and restoration of derelict land, the disposal and re-cycling of dangerous and other wastes and reducing pollution
(b) . . . is proud of its record on environmental matters. . . . will: develop policies for resource conservation. Use our campaign for a better environment to provide the basis of secure employment, for example in pollution control and in waste re-cycling
(c) 1. Conservation and wiser use of scarce resources especially land and energy; 2. War on waste and pollution; 3. Tire need to preserve the natural environment for future generations 4. A re-ordering of our economic and social priorities to put them on a sounder basis

8. Northern Ireland
(a) For the present direct rule remains the only viable alternative. Any change can be made only with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. We will work to make it more accountable and democratic
(b) Its future still depends on the defeat of terrorism and the restoration of law and order
(c) There must be no capitulation to violence. Direct rule must continue for the time being

9. Women
(a) Equal opportunities for men and women in all spheres, especially equal pay for work of equal value
(b) We will progressively eliminate the inequalities that still exist in the social security and tax systems
(c) (NB One of the parties appears to have nothing to say on the subject. When I telephoned their head office the spokesperson said they were in favour of equal rights for women)

10. Animals
(a) We shall update the Brambell Report, the codes of welfare for farm animals and the legislation on experiments on live animals. We shall also re-examine the rules and enforcement applying to the export of live animals
(b) We will have stronger control on the export of live animals for slaughter, on conditions of factory farming and on experiments on live animals
(c) Support for demand of the General Election Coordinating Committee for Animal Protection for a Royal Commission on Animal Welfare

11. The Promises
(a) I appeal to you, as a voter concerned with what is best for Britain, to throw your support behind the fresh approach which the . . . party represents
(b) We make no lavish promises
(c) It is the message of hope for the future based on a record of promises kept, that . . . . puts to the British people

Answers to quiz at the bottom of the post

How did you score?

• If you were under 10% successful, score well on cynicism 
• If you were 10% to 40% successful, score well on desperation 
• If you were 40% to 60% successful, score well on the law of averages
• If you were 60% to 80% successful you must have written the manifestos
• If you were 80% to 100% successful, I do not believe you 
• If you were 100% or over successful, you answered each question roughly as follows:

 “That quote was taken from the manifesto of a capitalist party; one that stands for a society which puts profitability first; one which supports a world of mass starvation and food surpluses; a world of shortages and under usage of potential both in terms of labour and physical resources—a world of stock piled weapons of destruction; a world where a full satisfying life is denied to the majority. That is—capitalism. That is what Labour, Liberal and Tory all stood for in the last Election”.

Ronnie Warrington

Answers to the Election Quiz

Running Commentary: This Is Your Choice (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is your choice

The politicians’ zeal to win power can persuade them into making some curious promises but none were more so than the Tories’ pledge that when they were in office we would be able to spend our money as we wished.

This must have misled millions of people who are struggling to pay their mortgage, or who live in slum tenements or on council estates, into believing that they would be free to spend their money on buying a stately home in the country.

Or perhaps millions of comprehensive school children were distracted from their lessons, wondering whether Tory freedom meant that their parents would choose to pay for them to go to Eton or Roedean. How many battered Escorts and Marinas would disappear from the kerbside, as workers chose to spend their money on a few Rolls Royces and Bentleys?

The mind boggles.

What Thatcher and her gang were really talking about was not more than a minor juggling with the details of the tax system—a cut in income tax, perhaps with an increase in Value Added Tax. To the Conservative Party, this sort of fiddling represented a new age of freedom and prosperity. To the Labour Party it represented a crushing intensifying of working class poverty.

At the most, the Tory proposals amounted to a slight rearrangement of poverty. And that is partly what both Labour and Tory parties are in business for. Running the affairs of British capitalism means administering the exploitation of the workers in such a way as to convince them that poverty is abundance, degradation is freedom.

At successive elections, millions of working people choose to ignore the real power in their hands—the power to change society basically—and instead make a meaningless selection between Labour Party poverty and Conservative Party poverty. The support for the alternative society is pitifully weak.

The election was a triumph for Thatcher, for one group of political con-men over the other. But for anyone who cares about human interests it was yet another disaster.


Danger — Law and Order

Boosted by regular injections of hysteria from Judges too senile and policemen too virile, the Law and Order lobby has been gathering strength for some time now.

Criminal statistics have been greeted in such a way as to suggest that we are about to be drowned under a massive crime wave. A few historically grisly cases have been seized upon and magnified to the point at which Britain seems to be a land populated exclusively by muggers and murderers.

Both major parties felt the pressure of this, to the extent of responding in their manifestoes. The Tories were harder and more specific in their policies and Thatcher’s victory seemed to get a cautious welcome from the Police Federation.

Whenever they have discussed the problem of crime, the Tories have managed to sound as if their policies had some element of originality. In fact there is nothing original about promising policemen more pay—and it does not follow that this would automatically lead to a more successful hunt after criminals.

Another Tory proposal—for harsher Detention Centres where young offenders would get a short, sharp shock—is also well worn and discredited. Such Centres were introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 1948 one of the achievements of the post-war Labour government. In practice the Centres were not used as the law had intended; courts sentenced youngsters to go there who had already had the sort of life experience such as to inure them against all possible further shocks. With time, the regime at the Centres has mellowed so that there is now little difference between them and a tougher-than-average children’s home.

The fact that the people they say are their enemies have already introduced them, and that they have been shown to fail, does not of course stop the Tories proposing Detention Centres as a method of combatting crime. Such is the futility of capitalism’s reformists.

The debate (if it can be so dignified) on Law and Order is susceptible to bigotry and impulsiveness and has a disturbing underlying note of violence and repression. Because it can result in the police having more power it can have serious implications for political freedom and for the chances of an innocent person proving their case.

A political party which trawls for votes in that sort of dirty water can be taking some heavy risks—with their own freedom as well as with that of others.


Business as usual

One thing the Labour Party has always been very sensitive about is its standing with the Business Community. Whenever a Labour government has been elected there has never been any lack of ministers anxious to reassure the Stock Exchange, the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors and anyone else in earshot that they offered absolutely no threat to the profitability of industry.

Indeed there have been Labour ministers—and industrialists—who actually claimed that their government was better for industry than the Tories. Harold Wilson’s infamous resignation honours list proved that Labour was in harness with at least some sections of the business world.

Then again, what was Denis Healey doing all those years, when he was fighting low paid workers over pay claims? Was he undermining the basis of capitalist society? Posing a threat from which the City would never recover? Did stockbrokers tremble, at the very mention of the Five Per Cent Pay Norm for dustmen and hospital ancillaries?

In fact, any capitalist who knows what they’re about should be eternally grateful to the Labour Party, not just for administering capitalism on their behalf but for telling the workers that they were running socialism.

No Labour minister has ever stopped to explain how we could have socialism with a Stock Exchange, a royal family, riches and poverty, slums and palaces . . . Any review of the last five miserable years under Labour shows up that they were no more than an alternative way of running capitalism.

Of course they had their differences with the Conservatives. At times, when they are out of power, one or other of the big parties may be sufficiently susceptible to the approaches of some pressure group to formulate a policy which favours that group—and then present that policy to the voters as being in their interests.

But that is about as far as their differences go. When they are in power they prove that they have no basic divergences. And the reason for that is simple. It is what the working class want.

Whether Labour or Tory wins, is something for the capitalist class to celebrate. As long as the working class continue to vote as their masters wish, each election result will be given the champagne reception in Threadneedle Street.

General Election . . . 1979 (1979)

Party News from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington Branch, with EC approval, will contest the next General Election in Islington and Ralph Critchfield has been nominated as our prospective candidate. It had been the intention of the Branch to contest the Election had it been called last Autumn. It would have given us little time to launch a satisfactory campaign; may Jim be thanked for postponing the date!

Now we have time in hand. A manifesto has been approved for publication. The Branch and Parliamentary Committee are in the process of finalising plans for canvassing, literature selling, meetings etc. Fuller details will appear in subsequent issues of the Standard. In the meantime, members and sympathisers who can help, (there are jobs that can be done prior to the election) are requested to send their name and address to Ian Westgate, 1 Helix Gardens, London SW2.

We can then advise you of our plans, together with a note of what you can do.

Islington Branch

Election Report (1979)

Party News from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although there has only been a branch in the area for a year, the Islington South and Finsbury election campaign was a successful one. Successful, even though the Socialist candidate, Ralph Critchfield, polled only 78 votes. Unlike the parties of capitalism, in our campaign we only asked convinced socialists to vote for us and actually asked people not to vote for us unless they were fully in agreement. It came as no surprise to us that the number of convinced socialists in the constituency was few. Ten thousand manifestos, three thousand bulletins, 20,000 election specials and a number of Socialist Standards were distributed during the election. Our manifesto was published in full in the Islington Gazette. Two well attended public meetings were held. Extensive canvassing was carried out. We thank those of you who contributed to the election campaign, either by activity or by responding to the request for donations to the election fund. The Socialist Party is not just an election-time organisation. Socialism is as imperative now as it was before May 4.