News in Review: Budget for Defence (1963)

The News in Review column from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budget for Defence

One of the big debates which British capitalism is currently having with itself is over what it likes to call Defence.

Independent, or American controlled, missiles? Airborne, or carried in submarines? Conventional, or nuclear forces? Big or small?

The latest government White Paper on these questions, the Statement on Defence, 1963 shows what capitalism in this country wants in the way of armed forces during the next twelve months.

The Royal Navy is to get some Polaris submarines, nuclear powered, to stay submerged for weeks on end and armed with deadly missiles which they can fire from under the water.

The Air Force is to get a new nuclear weapon to give its bombers more hitting power (although some correspondents doubted the existence of a really new weapon).

The guns of the army are to have greater fire power.

Fine. All the Forces, in other words, will be able to knock down more buildings, make bigger holes, and kill more people, in the future than they could in the past. Fine.

Perhaps this is value for money; £ 1,837,700,000 will be spent on the Armed Forces and their weapons during the nest year, which is £116,640,000 up on last year.

We can all think of things which, even under capitalism, could avoid some of their problems if they had a bit more money. Some charitable appeals, for example, often tell us of the surprisingly long time they can feed somebody like a hungry refugee child for a pitifully small sum.

But these arc only human beings— definitely not priority for capitalism’s expenditure.

Never mind. Aren't you glad they’re making so many big, busting weapons to defend you with? Aren’t you glad so much of society's wealth and brains and talent is being poured into things which can only harm society?

Don't you think it’s time you called a halt to this madness and organised a sane world, which will not have the conflicts which need armed forces to settle them?

Two things are needed for a “defence” budget—weapons and money. The world would be a better place without both of them.

Labour and Nationalisation

With the crown barely settled upon his head, Mr. Harold Wilson has found himself under heavy fire from the Conservative propaganda machine.

Tory M.P. Gerald Nabarro inveigled Wilson into confirming, with the House of Commons for an audience, that Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution — the bit about standing for ". . . the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" is in fact still the policy of the entire Party.

Perhaps it was coincidence that at that very moment the Conservative Ccntral Office had just got ready a new pamphlet, Entitled to Know, which suggests on the flimsiest evidence that the Labour Party has its nationalising eye upon no fewer than 104 firms in this country. Naturally, Wilson's affirmation of Clause Four was rushed into the front page of the pamphlet.

No sane person can really believe that the Labour Party wants to nationalise firms like Boots and the Prudential. Some of the other companies in the Tory pamphlet—aircraft firms, for example—are already deep in the government's pocket anyway. Nationalisation, as an attempted solution for some of British capitalism's difficulties, was never designed to go as far as the Tories make out.

So Wilson could comfortably dismiss the charge as “childish” and, more bluntly, The Economist could accuse the Conservative Party of ". . . telling lies in its propaganda. . ." Altogether, the scare fell very flat, not like the 1959 campaign about the famous 600 firms.

But wait a minute. Why do the Labour Party agree on the one hand that they stand for wholesale nationalisation which is what Clause Four means—and yet deny it when their opponents bring them face to face with it?

Labour once told us that nationalisation was the answer to our problems, that it was the quick road to Socialism; they can hardly drop it entirely now. But the working class have become dubious enough about nationalisation to make it a vote loser. This is what forces the Labour Party into their double act, so that Wilson must actually be trapped into admitting that it might be his policy.

If nationalisation were the road to Socialism the Labour Party should be proud to stand up for it whatever the consequences. But in fact it is only another makeshift of capitalism.

The chances are that the Labour Party will fight off the latest Tory stunt. They may even win the next election and give us a bit more of their brand of state capitalism.

One thing, though, they will not be able to give us. That is Socialism.

Prices

One of the favourite tricks of Labour M.P.s is to get up in the House and ask, innocently, to be told the present purchasing power of the pound compared to what it was in October, 1951, when the Conservatives came back to power.

They get some illuminating replies.

The latest of these, from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, shows that the pound of 1951 is now, in the same terms, worth only 13s. 11d. Presumably these figures were carefully recorded by Labour members and have by now been used in countless speeches up and down the country.

To be sure, it was a big Tory promise in 1951 that they would stop prices rising and so maintain the buying power of the pound. At the time, because the working class had seen so many wage increases wither under the heat of rising prices, the whole thing was something of an election issue. The Tory boast went down well.

But like so many other issues, this one is a great illusion. Workers are too easily misled into thinking that their fortunes are permanently affected by things like price levels. They rarely take the trouble to remember the history of prices and wages, which teaches exactly the opposite. Whatever they may earn, and whatever the level of prices, workers always have the same old struggle to balance their budget.

Perhaps this is too much like hard thinking. Perhaps the workers find it easier to moan about the latest price rise or—in other times, maybe—the latest wage cut.

Prices are for the moment a dead issue as far as vote catching goes, but they could come to life again.

If they do, the working class will do well to remember that voting for the parly which promises to put wages up or bring prices down—or both—can bring them no benefits.

Russia and the Oil Business

Oil is one of the commodities which Russia is anxious to export. This has been an expanding business; according to a United States House of Representatives report, the Soviet Union was overall an importer of oil in 1950, but by 1951 was exporting the stuff at the rate of 40 million tons a year.

This has worried some of the established oil interests in the Western world; Russia has a surplus of oil and in the recent past has gone out to capture some of their cherished markets.

So the recent “oil for ships” offer which Moscow seemed to be making was bound to ripple the surface of international trade.

The Americans and the other international oil companies were worried because the Russians were likely to upset the market by selling their oil at about twelve per cent. below the current price. On the other side of the deal, Washington does not favour its allies exporting to the Eastern bloc things like ships, which they classify as being of strategic value.

These reactions we might have expected. One capitalist power will always squeal when another pinches one of its markets.

So might we have expected the British shipyards, hungry for orders, to press for the acceptance of the deal. No business willingly passes up the chance of selling its products, especially when it is as depressed as shipbuilding is at the moment. So three yards on the Clyde combined to put in a tender for six fish-meal factory ships for export to Russia.

Unusual allies for the shipyards were the shipbuilding unions. And a strange ally for the Americans was the National Union of Mineworkers, which took up its customary hostile attitude at the very mention of the word oil.

This muddle is typical of those which crop up when deals like this are in the air. Capitalism is a mass of different groups of investment, with intricately opposed interests. We should leave these interests to fight out their deals themselves.

Workers usually think that they have a stake in the outcome of such situations But experience says that they do not. Whoever gets the ships and the oil will make not enough difference to working class lives to worry about.

The Passing Show: Post-Haste (1966)

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

Post-Haste

Have you ever been infuriated by postal delays, had letters lost or turning up days after you expect them? Only a few months ago a small letter took over a fortnight to reach us from another London postal district, and although perhaps this might have been an isolated case, it’s certainly not uncommon for parcels to take over a week to reach London from the provinces. Postcards were originally supposed to travel more quickly through the post than sealed letters, but this no longer seems to be the case, and in London anyway there has been a reduction in the collections and deliveries of mail.

All very annoying, you might think, and complaints to the GPO would no doubt bring the familiar reply of staff shortage, among other excuses. And unlike Tory MP Sir Gerald Nabarro, you wouldn’t be very likely to get a question asked in the House about it.

But then, Sir Gerald was really concerned about quite a different matter. He was very worried because some thousands of people did not receive their subscription forms for the ICI eight per cent unsecured loan stock 1988-93, but he had to be content with the Postmaster General’s explanation that the forms were posted late, and some were wrongly addressed anyway. According to The Guardian of October 20, the PMG made personal enquiries in response to the complaint; which shows how important he thought it was.

Well, there was about sixty million pounds involved, and the loan was quickly over-subscribed by about 37 times, so you can guess how annoyed Some of the shareholders must have been when they missed the chance of some really juicy pickings from ICI’s future exploitation of its workers. And if it hadn’t been Sir Gerald, some other “champion of minority rights” would have been on his feet to make a fuss. Which reminds us. Christmas is coming so you’d better post early. We don’t somehow think they’ll be quite so concerned if a few of your Christmas cards don’t make it until New Year’s Eve.


How Not To Face Facts

The pacifist movement’s conception of the modern world is about as shallow as a kid’s paddling pool after a three-month drought. It is astoundingly adept at acquiring facts and then ignoring their implication. At a recent meeting of The Peace Pledge Union, I was given a leaflet. It was a neat effort, carrying some useful information on the vast waste of the world’s resources on armed forces, weapons of war, etc. “Don’t you think this is madness?” one of the captions ran; and who but a fool would say no?

So far so good. But when the PPU starts talking about “what could be done instead,” their fact-finding ends and question-begging begins. Of course it’s true that the £50,000 millions spent yearly on arms could be used to build umpteen hospitals, houses and schools, or provide sorely needed tractors and harvesters. Then why isn’t this done? Why indeed do armaments exist in the first place? After all, no government likes to see such wealth tied up in this way, but if, as the leaflet implies, it’s more a question of lack of sense, all we have to do is kick out the stupid statesmen and replace them with sensible ones.

But then, there's more to it than that. First of all, although war can be called madness when looked at from a human point of view, it does make sense of a sort in a class divided society. Given a world of commercial rivalries, no capitalist class is going to sit idly by and watch foreign competitors steal its economic thunder. It will use armed force when it deems it necessary, even to the point of a major shooting match. Under such circumstances, your politicians can be as clever or as stupid as you like. It makes no difference to the underlying forces pushing towards war.

Is there any guarantee, anyway, that a reduction in arms spending would give us more of the things we so desperately want? Far from it. Capitalism is primarily concerned with production for the market, not with satisfying our needs, and the money saved by arms cuts would merely be earmarked for other investment. A look at the policies of the present Labour Government will show us the truth of this. Indeed, we can even point to instances where money has been spent in taking plant out of production because of unfavourable market conditions—textiles in Britain, wheat in USA —yet there are plenty of ragged, ill-fed people in the world.

What is needed is the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement with a system of common ownership and production for use, not the signing of pledges against war, which past experience tells us will not be worth the paper they’re written on when the crunch comes.


The examples of Our Betters

A period of severe restraint, did we say? Rank Organisation Chairman John Davis has been ordered to pay £25,000 to his ex-wife, actress Dinah Sheridan in addition to her £8,500 a year maintenance, following her divorce. The lump sum was originally “only” £15,000 but, commented the appeal court judge, “£15,000 does not go very far towards purchasing a house in the sort of neighbourhood where a woman of this background can reasonably be expected to live. The £15,000 is so low that the court is bound to interfere.”

Wonder if anyone will think of invoking Part IV against that little lot? And it’s not even tied to a productivity agreement.


Gaspers

“Wilson and his colleagues have found it impossible to reconcile the Socialist theories they held in Opposition with the Tory facts of life they have found in office.” (Tory MP Quintin Hogg, at Ealing, 7.10.66.)

"The Minister of Power's views that steel nationalisation will go through by next summer brought an immediate rally in steel shares, and other sectors came up smartly on the prospect of reinvestment of the compensation money." (Guardian Market Report, 22.10.66.)

“In case of atomic attack, the Federal ruling against prayer in this building will be temporarily suspended”. (High School notice in California, U.S.A., reported Daily Mirror, 26,10.66.)

“I’m sorry I can give you nothing at present except sympathy.” (The Queen to the parents of Aberfan, 29.10.66.)

“The pensioner and the housewife suffer most when prices rise.” (The New Britain, Labour Party manifesto at the 1964 election.) .

“Increases in the cost of living have reduced the purchasing power of the £6 10s. old age pension for married couples by 8s. 6d. since it was introduced on March 29, 1965, Mr. Pentland, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Social Security, disclosed in a Commons reply last night.” (Daily Telegraph, 8.11.66.)

“The concrete analysis of concrete conditions and the concrete resolution of concrete contradictions are the living soul of Marxism-Leninism.” (Lin Piao, Chinese Minister of Defence.)

Eddie Critchfield

A Matter of License (1969)

From the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every ambitious politician feels the need to attract publicity. Not, of course, any sort of publicity—one M.P. got a lot of space in the press some time ago because the Russian secret police had photographed him, in a Moscow hotel bedroom, in what was delicately described as a compromising situation. Another is involved in the complicated scandal of John Bloom’s Rolls Razor Company.

The kind of publicity a politician looks for plays up to popular fears and prejudices and makes him appear as the man who looks after the interests of the people. Very often this means an M.P. will make a speech which, without any real evidence in support, simply repeats popular bigotries. This stimulates the bigots into thinking that the rumours, half truths and malice on which they have fed have some substance; the politicians is “only saying what everyone else thinks.”

It was this sort of reaction which gave so much support to the inflammatory utterances of Enoch Powell and which brought the dockers to the Houses of Parliament to unburden themselves to, of all people, Gerald Nabarro. This M.P. had already done enough to give him the respected title of the man who says what everyone else is thinking; he it was who asked, on the Any Questions? programme, whether anyone wanted their daughter marrying a Negro and perhaps leading to coffee coloured grandchildren.

There were, of course, many people who thought the real issue was whether anyone would like their daughter marrying anyone as pompous and offensive as Nabarro but they were swamped in the general chorus of approval of his remarks. Something similar happened when Nabarro made his famous statement last month that he had irrefutable evidence of the government’s intention to put up the road tax on private cars from £25 to £35 a year. Here again, a politician was repeating rumours which had been going the rounds for some time—as indeed they go the rounds almost every year as Budget time approaches. Nothing the government could say could make any difference; for most people there was no smoke without fire.

If this was a somewhat hysterical reaction, it was because Nabarro was playing upon a very sensitive nerve. The British working class have yet to recover from the shock of finding a few million of them running motor cars; most are still too dazed by the realisation of this pre-war dream be able to take a balanced view of the situation. The motor car is one of their most cherished possessions—if we can use that word about something which is often owned or subsidised by their employers or in fact is owned by the finance company who have put up the money for its hire purchase.

This does not stop a worker who runs a car often feeling that he has been lifted out of his class by it, or at any rate has one foot on the ladder. This has raised motoring into a political issue. People who cannot afford the money to buy a car outright talk airily of the economics of investing hundreds of millions of pounds in new roads, as if the most important thing in their life was to be able to motor as quickly, and in as straight a line, as possible between one point and another. And of course any move to make motoring dearer—to put up the price of petrol, tyres, the road licence—is viewed as a deadly assault upon the dream and so becomes a part of the politics.

There is yet another aspect of this. “Irrefutable evidence” said Nabarro and millions of workers were stirred by the phase. But just a minute. Does this mean that there will now be a widespread demand for irrefutable evidence to back up everything a politician says? Will the Nabarros of the world start a new fashion of establishing the strength of their evidence before they release their statements to the press?

Imagine the Prime Minister coming onto television to tell us that he had irrefutable proof of his impotence to deal with the problems of British capitalism, undeniable evidence that he had made false promises and that he and all his colleagues were tricksters? What if President Nixon, given a little time to settle in, said the same thing? If the rulers of Russian capitalism confessed they had proof that they were running a bureaucratic dictatorship which had nothing to do with Socialism?

Nabarro, with his sudden thirst for proof, would have to tell all those dockers that he stood for the class they are constantly fighting over wages and conditions. He would have to admit that the evidence says that skin colour does not affect a person’s capacity to learn, to act, to think nor to live in harmony with others and that there is no scientific reason against interbreeding. What he would have to say, were he to spell out the evidence about himself as a politician, hardly bears thinking about.

The confessions would not end there, Politicians would have to eat an awful lot of their words. What, for example, is the irrefutable proof on a worker’s social standing? He lives by the wage he gets by selling his labour power; this is not a gratuity from the employer. In the long run it is based upon what it takes, under average social conditions, to keep a worker alive and fit for work and able to reproduce. The point is that average social conditions are variable, from place to place and from time to time.

It seems too obvious to say that the needs of a worker in Siberia are different from those of a worker in South America; variations in climate, for one thing, give them differing standards of housing, food and clothes. What is perhaps less obvious is that social conditions vary with time. Human knowledge is expanding; the industrial ’results of that expansion lead to new products, new industries—and to a need for new markets in which the products can be sold.

This process can move faster at one time than another. Since the war it has moved pretty fast with the result that many homes have a car, television, washing machine and so on. The other side of the coin is the fact that, if these products are now practically established as part of working class living standards, this is often a reflection of new pressures upon the worker and of the intensifying of their exploitation.

Washing machines and refrigerators, for example, are actually needed in a family where the wife goes out to work, as she often has to, to balance the family budget. A washing machine is needed to do the job which a woman who works all day has neither the time nor the energy to do by hand. A fridge is needed because she has time only for one big shopping outing a week and has to have somewhere to store and preserve what she buys then. In the same way cars are needed by those workers who, because they cannot afford the rent or the repayments on houses near the industrial concentrations, are forced to live twenty or thirty miles away from their workplace.

The important point here is not simply that a worker gets a car to get a job to get a car. Nobody has yet found a way of halting what they call progress and this means that a worker in the meanest circumstances today may have built into his living standards something which, say, Queen Victoria never dreamed of. But this does not elevate that worker into the same class as the Royal Family.

Now what about Nabarro and his licence fee? Fundamentally a worker's wage, and the conditions which set the guidelines for it, are not affected by taxation. The price of petrol, for example, has gone up and down over the past few years apart from tax changes. And if the general, overriding trend has been upwards, then this is true of most commodities, including the labour power the worker sells for his wage, whether they are subject to taxation or not.

If, then, workers are concerned with their living standards, and with facts, they should spurn and despise the ambitious clowning of politicians. Let them look at the proof that they are endlessly fed with lies and promises and diversions, all of which obscure the fundamental facts of their social situation. If they will do that they will have ceased to make common cause with their enemies, and perhaps even started to identify their friends.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Getting Tougher (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was not so long ago when the competition between the Labour Party and the Tories was over which of them was the more moderate. Political extremists were dangerous, damaging, eccentric, beyond the pale. And anyway they were suspected of losing votes. Moderation was the buzz-word. There was something called a bi-partisan foreign policy, under which broad agreement between the two big parties decided how the interests of British capitalism were to be represented abroad. In economic affairs there was Butskellism, a combination of the names Butler and Gaitskill. who were the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Shadow Chancellor and who were expected to agree on almost everything about working-class exploitation and making profits

This was all very cosy, even if it could cause frustration among some MPs. There was, for example, the Tory Gerald Nabarro, a loud-mouthed buffoon who sat for a well- heeled constituency in Worcestershire and who once asked out loud whether any sensible parent would want their daughter bringing home a black man. There were those Labour Members who had come to Parliament from a background in the mines or the shipyards and who persisted, in the face of all the evidence, in their belief that their party would one day transform society in the interests of the working class. No serious attention was paid to these people: moderation, bi-partisan policies were regarded as the best way to protect the interests of British capitalism.

Well things are a bit different now because the competition today is for the title of the tougher party and in this the Labour Party is doing its best to make the running. Gordon Brown, who recently dispelled rumours that he is moderate enough to consider getting married, promises that when he is Chancellor he will be tough on government spending. There will, he says, be no blank cheques, which means no uncontrolled expenditure on things which most people probably think highly desirable if not vital; things like health care, education, housing. Jack Straw promises that when he is Home Secretary he will be tough on people who wash car windscreens without being asked, noisy neighbours, kids who are on the streets when they should be in bed. David Blunkett will show he has taken over Education by being tough on homework. Tony Blair will be tough on just about everything and everyone, especially members of his party who disagree with him, because he is the Leader and he wants to be Prime Minister.

The Labour Party’s zeal to become the next government is causing its leaders to take stances which many of their supporters must find surprising, or amusing, or outrageous. In fact the leaders are only revealing the true nature and purpose of the party, a capitalist political organisation whose object is to be in power. In the past this has often been obscured by Labour leaders' pretence that their policies will transform capitalism to the benefit of the majority. New Labour has gone some way to disposing of that fallacy. When, for example, Gordon Brown talks about not signing blank cheques he is stating a fact, even if the people who, according to him, have benefited from "blank cheques"; sick people. unemployed workers, the homeless, single parents on benefit will be considerably puzzled to hear about this generosity which they are supposed to have received.

Homeless
In a recent conference on homeless young people (organised by the National Children's Homes, which wants to abolish homelessness among people aged 16 to 21 within five years. No-one should hold their breath about this) Blair claimed that in spite of its get-tough policies the Labour Party still cares: "I believe you can be in favour of zero tolerance of crime and zero tolerance of homeless" was how he put it. This subtle link of crime and being without a home illustrates how Blair and his party are trying to face both ways at once on the issue. If crime is encouraged by social and personal handicaps, why is the Labour Party so keen to punish the criminals? What happened to the principle Labour once lay claim to to deal with the causes of disruptive behaviour rather than with the people who disrupt? (In fact, there is evidence that homeless people are more likely to be the victims of crime than its perpetrators. They are more vulnerable than the average; that is one reason Kings Cross is so ugly a place.)

At that conference Blair defended his New Labour policies:

   "It is only by broadening our appeal that we stand a chance of winning an election: and frankly it is only by winning an election that we will be able to do anything for the poor, the unemployed and the homeless."

The Blair strategy, of making the Labour Party so much like the Conservatives that they will benefit from the kind of voter intentions which have kept the Tories in power since 1979, may have one effect the Labour leader has not bargained for. If, the voters may ask, there is nothing to choose between these two parties what is the point of making a choice?

Apathy
This attitude can already be found by anyone who gets involved in a discussion about politics with people who would normally vote for one of the capitalist parties. It is very difficult to find someone who supports the Labour Party with any passion or conviction. It is very difficult to find anyone who intends to vote Labour but believes a Labour government will be noticeably different from the present one. Cynicism rules, but is this OK?

No. Because cynicism can breed apathy. as people who are pre-occupied with the struggle to get a living ask questions about the effectiveness, not only of politicians. but of the whole process of political debate and choice. It is healthy to doubt the politicians, to use our experience to expose their opportunism, the flaws in their arguments, their inability to affect the problems they solved so easily in their manifestos. But to despair of political issues, to give up working to understand why capitalism works as it does and what we have to do to change society, is to surrender our political power.

The case for a new society docs not deal in moderate compromises with opponents. It is the clear assertion of the fact that those who run the world now can do it in their own interest instead of that of a parasite minority. It is not power to the Tories or to New Labour but to the people.

Ivan

Mr. Macmillan's Worries (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having floored them at the polls last October, the Tory Party, like any good wrestler, has managed to sit on Labour's head and twist its arms. The Brighouse by-election was a good victory for the Government. Can Mr. Macmillan, then, do nothing wrong? Must he go on winning elections, until everybody else gives up? It must be very irritating for the Labour Party, who can be expected to grasp at every straw that swirls past them in the waters of defeat.

What are these straws? Mr. Amory’s Budget revealed some dissension in the Tory ranks, for whilst Labour members were cheering the Chancellor, Lord Hinchingbrooke, Gerald Nabarro and others sat in glum disapproval. More, Mr. Nabarro forced a division in the Commons. This was probably considered to be a bit thick in the clubs. Hinchingbrooke could be excused, perhaps, but that chap Nabarro, with his big moustache and loud voice and his L.C.C. education—really, it is too much. Labour, of course, gloried in it, forgetting the days when their own critics of, for example, Bevin’s foreign policy, were so unpopular. These men—Zilliacus, Platts-Mills and the rest—were called not cads, but stabbers-in-the-back, fellow travellers, and so on, and were eventually expelled from the Party. Of course, any government dislikes a split amongst its parliamentary supporters, because unity makes it so much easier to push through the measures necessary to organise British capitalism. That is why Nabarro is considered such a bounder and why Labour’s Russophiles were dealt with so sharply.

The tragedy is that workers are often taken in by these squabbles. The points at issue—whether Britain should have been more friendly to Russia after the war, whether Mr. Amory’s Budget should include such high expenditure- are unimportant to workers' lives. The cause of our poverty—the class ownership of wealth—goes on, whether one year we pay twopence less for our beer and the next twopence more for our cigarettes.

Other worries

In any case, Mr. Macmillian has other things to worry about. This month, he must see through the conference of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and later he must attend the Summit meeting. Although the recent bloodletting in South Africa seems, in human interests, to demand some frank speaking, the statement which will come at the end of the Commonwealth conference will probably be as platitudinous as ever. Doubtless, it will touch on what is called the value of the Commonwealth. In fact, the real value of this organisation lies in the commercial ties between its members. These ties are judged on strictly economic terms. Australia, for example, found in recent years that post war inflation had decreased the value of some of the duty preferences which Great Britain allowed her. Letting the so-called Commonwealth spirit go by the board, she agitated for—and got—some alterations.

Mr. Iain Macleod, the Colonial Secretary, was near the mark when he addressed the recent annual meeting of the Glasgow Unionist Association. The Guardian's report of his speech said :

Mr. Macleod said that we did not go abroad to govern: we went abroad to trade. It wasn't really true that trade followed the flag. It would be more true to say that the flag followed trade. So, if we were wise we could stay in countries we once ruled as traders, farmers, planters, shippers, business men and engineers. (22/3/60.)

Naturally, Mr. Macleod was trying to put it in the most attractive nutshell he could find, but the fact is there—empires are built upon the capitalist need for trade and expansion, which makes the deaths of the Sharpeville Africans—and of the millions of others who have been killed in defence of their master’s empires—especially bitter.

Summit

At long last, having sorted out whether it is better for the premiers to decide what their foreign secretaries shall discuss, or vice versa, the Summit meeting is at hand. It is a depressing fact that these conferences do little to ensure the future peace of the world. Perhaps the most propitious time for a Summit conference was in the war-weary year of 1945. Then, if ever, the politicians could have talked peace. Instead, as usual, they got down to carving up the world between the victors, conceiving the disputes from which a future war could be born. They divided Berlin. They divided Korea. Either of these, during the last twelve years, might have caused a third world war. There is no point in moaning over this. These conferences are arranged so that the various capitalist powers can discuss the issues of economic advantage and military power which are so important to them. Nobody can reasonably expect a peaceful conclusion. Yet workers put their faith in them, hoping that the representative of their government, like a champion boxer, will come out on top.

Which brings us back to Mr. Macmillan. Can he crush the rebellion behind him? Ride out the criticism of his neutrality on Sharpeville, captivate the Summit talks? If he can, and if that boom keeps going, working class support for his Party will probably increase. But this could have a serious effect. In 1950, a survey of the Greenwich constituency pointed to the conclusion that, if electors there had voted in accordance with their opinions (on steel nationalisation, and so on) the Tories, and not—as actually happened—Labour would have won the seat. This conclusion was repealed by a similar survey in 1951 in North-east Bristol. How ironical—and how galling for Mr. Macmillan—if he was so successful that all his supporters voted Labour!

This is no joke. In this country and all over the world, political parties are grappling for the power to organise the affairs of their capitalist class. It is working class ignorance and indifference that votes for the slick leader and the dazzling promises. Ignorance and indifference give capitalism each new lease of life, to continue its vicious contradictions.

Ivan

Enoch Powell: aftermath or prelude (1968)

From the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alice has stepped through the looking glass. The London dockers have cheered right wing Tory M.P. Gerald Nabarro. Jack Dash has tried to stop a strike. Dockland Communists have taken a couple of clergymen down to the East End for, presumably, moral support. These were some of the immediate results of Enoch Powell's infamous speech.

One of the many ironies in this situation is its central character. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Powell, whose first name is John, should want to be known as Enoch, with its suggestion of an arid crank, too eager to pronounce harsh judgement. (Quinton Hogg once called him "a sort of Mao Tse-Tung of Toryism".)

Powell has always acted the part of Enoch. It is doubtful if many of his recent supporters are familiar with his opinions on issues other than immigration, or would understand what he was talking about if they tried to find out.

How many dockers, for example, would agree with what he wrote about the usefulness—or rather lack of it—of trade unions in the Sunday Times of September 6 1964:

(the remuneration of labour) is rarely affected appreciably, upwards or downwards, by combination; and then the effect is more or less temporary and purchased at the cost of the general public, including other workers.

How many Smithfield porters would support his attitude on price control:

. . . and management had no business to accept any such responsibility for keeping prices stable or reducing them. The duty of every management was to conduct the business in a way which was likely to maximise the return on the capital invested. (The Guardian, 29/1/64.)

How many of those who now think they back Enoch would go along with what he wrote about hospital waiting lists in his book Medicine and Politics:

It might (!) be thought macabre to observe that if people are on a waiting list long enough, they will die—usually from some cause other than that for which they joined the queue. Short of dying, however, they frequently get bored or better, and vanish. 

 Nobody knows if Powell has ever tried to make a joke, but if he has that passage was not one of his attempts. It was written, with much more in the same heartless vein, by a man who was once Minister of Health.

There is plenty of evidence to support the view that Powell has an unrepentant contempt for popular opinion. The question is, now, is why he has suddenly played for the mass vote, using the well known demagogue's trick of throwing a mass of mud knowing that most of it will stick? Why did he use forecasts of immigration which were loaded and distorted? Why did he talk about the man who fears that in fifteen or twenty years the black man will have the whip hand over the white in Britain? Why did he trot out the story of the lonely, harassed widow who cannot be found, even by Powell himself?

This was the first case of a prominent British politician—a prospective Prime Minister, no less—stimulating, and appealing to colour prejudice. Powell's was a cunning speech which gave him a hero's reputation but it was a dangerous game he was playing.

What justification is there for Powell's reputation - How consistent and honest is he?

Most of his vociferous supporters have probably forgotten that during his term as Minister of Health the Health Service was eagerly recruiting immigrant workers of all types to plug the gaps in its manpower. They are also probably unaware that Powell has always stood out for the free movement of labour, for example in this speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery in February 1964:

We are fearful of the big movement of population and of industry without which industrial progress is not possible. We are timid in the face of change in almost any form.

Immigration, of course, is a "change"; it is also a "big movement of population".

Then there was Powell's famous resignation in 1958, often cited as evidence of his integrity, with Peter Thorneycroft and Nigel Birch. (Duncan Sandys criticised the resigners, Nabarro accused them of "rocking the boat"; Macmillian dismissed the whole matter nonchalantly, as a "little local difficulty".) The point of dispute was the proposal to increase government expenditure during the next year. Powell was quite clear where he stood on this; in a speech to his constituency party after his resignation he aid:

If Mr. Thorneycroft's conviction that Government spending should be limited to its present level could be legitimately criticised, then it should be on the ground that it was too lax, not too strict . . . (The Times, 10/1/58.)

It is instructive to consider what followed this great stand on principle. In 1958, public authorities' current expenditure, that is, the combined central government and local authority expenditure, was £6,524m. This kept in rising until in 1960 it reached £7,441m. On principle, then, Powell should have stayed out of government. But in 1960 he managed to stifle his misgivings and accept office as Minister of Health, Government spending continued to rise—in 1961 it was £8,136m. and in 1962 £8,668m. But Powell hung on to his job.

He did, in fact, get in another resignation of sorts, after the Tory magic circle selected Douglas-Home to succeed Macmillan. Powell gave no reason for his refusal to accept office so it was widely assumed that he objected either to Douglas-Home (unlikely—politicians learn to embrace men they loathe) or to the method of his selection, which so clearly excluded the Powells of the Conservative Party.

Whatever his objections, Powell had no difficulty in forgetting them when he wanted to; after the Tory defeat in October he suddenly found it all right to join Douglas-Home's Shadow Cabinet and there he stayed until Heath sacked him after his Wolverhampton tirade.

These manoeuvres can be simply explained if we forget the theory that Powell is a man of rock-;like integrity and accept him as a normal, ambitious capitalist politician. His withdrawal after Macmillan's retirement came after a struggle for the Tory leadership. He came back into the Shadow Cabinet—and perhaps, in his own estimation, into the leadership stakes—when Douglas-Home was clearly on the way out and subsequently he stood, with little hope, in the election which gave Heath the job. Now Heath's standing is in doubt; there is strong criticism of him in his party for not making the most of Labour's predicament. If Labour begin to pick up their support again this criticism will intensify. This is typically a time for Powell to strike and now that he has done so we may be sure that a fierce and ruthless battle is raging behind those urbane Tory exteriors.

The danger is that Powell has started something which he will not be able to control. The appetite of racialism grows by what it feeds on; each tightening of immigration control in this country has come after a political panic—Smethwick, Duncan Sandy's scare over the Kenyan Asians and so on. What will happen if other politicians join Powell's bandwagon and if the working class begin voting in any numbers for organisations like the National Front and Union Movement? Already it is possible, and reasonable, for The Observer to comment "We must only be calm, but must also be willing to have our teeth knocked out in defence of tolerance." (28/4/68). In this atmosphere it cannot be said that it can't happen here. 

Parallels can be taken too far, but there are undeniable similarities between the present political situation in this country and that in Germany in the Thirties, There is a discredited Social Democratic party, whose responsibility in the failure to solve a chronic economic problem has brought widespread disillusionment with democratic politics. There is a popular impression, as the troops come back from East of Suez, that this country has suffered a military defeat.

There has not yet been a slump to rival the pre-war crash, but there are signs that a catastrophic collapse need not be far off. (The Economist of May 4 cheers us all up with its opening words: "It is possible that there will be another international currency crisis within the next few weeks.") There is an easily identifiable racial minority to take the blame for all working class problems and frustrations. Finally, there are now politicians in power or close to it who are trying to exploit the situation, as Schleicher and Von Papen did in Germany.

One fact that seems to have been overlooked is that Enoch Powell, an openly declared enemy of the working class, is no more than another capitalist politician. There is no reason to think that he will succeed where others have failed; a Powell government—or even a Powell dictatorship—would no more solve the problems of the British working class than have the Wilson government or the Hitler dictatorship did the problems of the German workers.

The abiding question is what the working class may be willing to go through before Powell is no longer their hero. We are now living in the unpleasant aftermath of his venomous speech. Is it a prelude to something even nastier to come?

Ivan